Paul Ghalioungui or Ghalioungi (1908–1987) (Arabic: بول غليونجي), MD (Cairo), MRCP (Lond), Professor of Medicine and former Chairman of Internal Medicine department, Ain Shams University Faculty of Medicine. An Egyptian endocrinologist, historian of Egyptian medicine, Egyptologist and an authority on Pharaonic medicine, he wrote a vivid history of Egyptian medicine in English, French, Arabic, German, and Spanish.
Life Ghalioungui was born in Mansoura, Egypt to an Eastern Orthodox Christian family of Greek descent. His great-grandfather was a man named Kyriacos Kaliontzis, whose children later changed the family surname to the more Arabic-sounding “Ghalioungui”. An Egyptian by birth, education, and practice, he writes of present and past Egyptian medicine (in Arabic, English and French) as only a clinician could write whose hobby was Egyptian archaeology and medical history. "It has long been my conviction that the medical history of a nation should be written by a native. A practising physician, Dr. Ghalioungui proves this contention." He also had two sons in the early 1940s. He spent some time in Kuwait during the 1970s. Mohammad Kamel Hussein (MKH), a prominent orthopedic surgeon in Egypt, encouraged both Paul Ghalioungui, then head of internal medicine, and Ahmed Ammar, a gynecologist at Ain Shams Medical College, to pursue the study of ancient Egyptian medicine. Hussein had a particular interest in the history of medicine, especially that of ancient Egypt. Paul Ghalioungi was president of the XXIXth International Congress of the History of Medicine, Egypt-Cairo December 26, 1984 – January 1, 1985. The main theme was Egyptian medicine up to the 3rd century of the Christian era, Islamic medicine, and east–west relations. Ghalioungui was familiar with both ancient Egyptian and modern medicine. He was a founder or member of several medical societies in Egypt, as well as Swiss and American endocrinology societies, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the International Society of the History of Medicine. During his career, he spent periods of study and professional activity in Austria, England, France, Kuwait, Switzerland, and the United States. He frequently cited the phrase, “Life is short. Art is long. Experience is fallible. Opportunity is fleeting. Judgment is difficult,” in his lectures and writings. He had many connections and correspondence with international scientists. Some of his letters to them are preserved abroad. Perhaps his interest in the history of medicine started from publishing his paper "Sur deux formes d'obésité représentées dans l'Égypte ancienne" on obesity and its types in Ancient Egypt, which represented a connection between his work as an endocrinologist and the history of medicine.
Education MB BCh from Cairo University Faculty of Medicine, Cairo, Egypt MSc from Ain Shams University Faculty of Medicine M.D. in Internal Medicine (Endocrinology) from Ain Shams University Faculty of Medicine MRCP
Scientific and clinical career Registrar to the Medical Unit, Kasr el Aini Hospital, Cairo, Egypt Chairman of the Departments of Internal Medicine, Ain Shams Faculty of Medicine Member of the International Society for the History of Medicine.
Scientific contributions Famous writer on the History of Medicine in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. "Paul Ghalioungui suggested in 1963 that the Egyptians "were the first in History to dare look at the other side of the abyss that separates magic from Medicine" The art of healing in ancient Egypt: a scientific reappraisal. The Lancet, Volume 372, Issue 9652, Pages 1802-1803 by R. David Publication of Ibn al-Nafis role in discovery of blood circulation and the "Theory of Blood Capillaries". Dr. Paul Ghalioungui summarizes the fundamental changes Ibn al-Nafis made to the incorrect Galenic-Avicennian theory "Denying the existence of any pores through the interventricular septum." "The flow of blood from the right ventricle to the lungs where its lighter parts filter into the pulmonary vein to mix with air." "The notion that blood, or spirit from the mixture of blood and air, passes from the lung to the left ventricle, and not in the opposite direction." "The assertion that there are only two ventricles, not three as stated by Avicenna." "The statement that the ventricle takes its nourishment from blood flowing in the vessels that run in its substance (i.e. the coronary vessels) and not, as Avicenna maintained, from blood deposited in the right ventricle." "A premonition of the capillary circulation in his assertion that the pulmonary vein receives what comes out of the pulmonary artery, this being the reason for the existence of perceptible passages between the two." About capillaries theory he wrote: Ibn al-Nafis had an insight into what would become a larger theory of the capillary circulation in his assertion that the pulmonary vein receives what comes out of the pulmonary artery, this being the reason for the existence of perceptible passages between the two."
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