Burrill Bernard Crohn (June 13, 1884 in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
– July 29, 1983 in
ConnecticutConnecticut is a state in the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and New York to the west and south ....
) was a Jewish-American gastroenterologist and one of the first to describe the disease of which he is the namesake,
Crohn's diseaseCrohn's disease is an inflammatory disease of the intestines that may affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract from anus to mouth, causing a wide variety of symptoms...
.
In 1932, Dr. Crohn and his two colleagues, Dr. Leon Ginzburg and Dr. Gordon Oppenheimer, published an important paper describing the features of the then relatively unknown condition.
Burrill Bernard Crohn (June 13, 1884 in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
– July 29, 1983 in
ConnecticutConnecticut is a state in the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and New York to the west and south ....
) was a Jewish-American gastroenterologist and one of the first to describe the disease of which he is the namesake,
Crohn's diseaseCrohn's disease is an inflammatory disease of the intestines that may affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract from anus to mouth, causing a wide variety of symptoms...
.
Life and work
In 1932, Dr. Crohn and his two colleagues, Dr. Leon Ginzburg and Dr. Gordon Oppenheimer, published an important paper describing the features of the then relatively unknown condition. They described fourteen cases, characterizing Crohn's disease as "Terminal Ileitis: A new clinical entity"; the description was changed to "Regional ileitis" on publication. It is by virtue of alphabetization rather than contribution that Crohn's name appeared as first author: because this was the first time the condition was reported in a widely-read journal, and the disease has come to be known as Crohn's Disease for reasons of publicity rather than precedence.
At the time he described the disease, Crohn was a practitioner and usually admitted his patients to the
Mount Sinai HospitalMount Sinai Hospital, founded in 1852, is one of the oldest and largest teaching hospitals in the United States. In 2009, Mount Sinai Hospital was ranked as one of the best hospitals in the U.S. by U.S...
in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
for their operations. Crohn gradually became more attached to the Mount Sinai Hospital, where he worked with the neurologist
Bernard SachsBernard Sachs was a Jewish-American neurologist. After graduating with a B.A. from Harvard in 1878, Sachs travelled to Europe and studied under some of the most prominent physicians of the time, such as Adolf Kussmaul , Friedrich Daniel von Recklinghausen , Friedrich Goltz , Rudolf Virchow...
(1858-1944). There he soon built a very large and successful reception for patients with granulomatous enterocolitis and eventually was made chief of the department of gastroenterology. As such he was highly respected through all of his professional career and received numerous patients from all over the USA, some even from Europe.
Some of his initial research into the causes of the disease was centered around his personal conviction that it was caused by the same pathogen, a bacterium called
Mycobacterium paratuberculosisMycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis is an obligate pathogenic bacteria in the genus Mycobacteria. It is often abbreviated M. paratuberculosis, M. avium sub. paratuberculosis or MAP...
(MAP), responsible for the similar condition that afflicts cattle called
Johne's diseaseJohne's disease is a contagious, chronic and sometimes fatal infection that affects primarily the small intestine of ruminants Johne's disease (pronounced "yo-knees") is a contagious, chronic and sometimes fatal infection that affects primarily the small intestine of ruminants Johne's disease...
. However he was unable to isolate the pathogen (most likely because
M. paratuberculosis sheds its cellular wall in humans and takes the form of a
spheroplastA spheroplast is a cell from which the cell wall has been almost completely removed, as by the action of penicillin. The name stems from the fact that after a microbe's cell wall is digested, membrane tension causes the cell to acquire a characteristic spherical shape...
, making it virtually undetectable under optical microscope). This theory has resurfaced in recent years and has been lent more credence with the arrival of more sophisticated methods of identifying MAP bacteria.
After retirement, Crohn moved to a mansion-like building situated in the interior of Connecticut. He spent his later years rather like a recluse, as all communications were handled by the Department of Public Relations at the Mount Sinai Hospital. As the hospital's greatest PR-asset, Crohn was treated with great respect.