Special Session: Anniversaries, Dutch contributions to urology and a book launch
While some anniversaries had already passed as the Amsterdam congress was postponed from 2020, it also allowed the EAU History Office to celebrate two others at its special session at EAU22. The History Office itself might find itself celebrating a slightly awkward “32-year anniversary” but on the other hand EAU22 was perfectly timed to commemorate both the EAU’s 50th Anniversary and the 40th anniversary of the discovery of intracavernous injections for erectile dysfunction.
Prof. Ronald Virag (Paris, FR) published the first paper on this topic in 1982 and he was present forty years later, introduced by former Chief Editor of European Urology Prof. Claude Schulman (Brussels, BE). Prof. Virag took the audience back to his original insights as a vascular surgeon, studying the effects of direct injection of papaverine into the epigastric artery, and how the discoveries were experienced by his patients in those first years.
Another speaker with an important first-hand account from the 1980s was former EAU Secretary General Prof. Debruyne, freshly honoured for his own contributions (1992-2004 and the 1990 Amsterdam Congress). Far from holding a dry talk about all of the signed documents, Prof. Debruyne painted a colourful picture of the cut and thrust of those early years, not shying away from pointing out the “challenging” personalities of those (almost exclusively) men who shaped the EAU in the first two decades.
The third anniversary belonged to the History Office itself. Dr. Johan Mattelaer (Kortrijk, BE), its first chairman and currently honorary member reflected on its origins at the 1990 EAU Congress in Amsterdam, and subsequent achievements. Dr. Mattelaer is still a prolific author, also presenting the latest Congress gift book, Roma Intima together with his co-author Dr. Bert Gevaert (Bruges, BE) at the session.
Dutch topics
It was Prof. Rob Pelger (Leiden, NL) who recounted how the Dutch surgeon Pieter Donker and Patrick Walsh worked together to discover and describe the nerves that control erections, paving the way for the nerve-sparing prostatectomy. The original sketches by Prof. Walsh, as well as several anatomical drawings by Donker are on display in the Historical Exhibition across from the EAU Booth.
Dr. Pieter Dik (Zeist, NL) seized on the Dutch theme to tell the stories of Van Stockum and Zaaijer, two Dutch urologists from the early 20th century whose names would not be attached to the procedures they pioneered: the Millin and Bricker. While Terrence Millin was aware of Van Stockum’s work and cited him some forty years later, Zaaijers unsuccessful attempts at uretero-ileal-cutaneostomy was largely unknown when Bricker published his method in the 1950s.
Perhaps most topical of all was Dr. Frank IJpma (Amsterdam, NL) who gave a potted history of his research into the Amsterdam surgeon’s guild as famously depicted by Rembrandt in his The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632).