Natalia Zylberlast-Zand (1883-1942?)
Natalia Zylberlast-Zand
Natalia Zylberlast-Zand was born on march 28, 1883 in Warsow in Congress Poland (an official part of the Russian Empire from 1867 to 1918). She was a second child of Dawid Zylberlast (Silberlast) (d. 1913) and Emilia Batavia (d. 1904). She had three siblings: two sisters - Julia Szliferstein (Szlifersztejn) and Regina Kon and a brother Alfred (1879–after 1938), who in adulthood changed his family name to Niemirski and was a film director and producer[1,2,3].
Warsaw 1883
Alfred Niemirski photo from Film News Calendar, 1929
In 1899, after a graduation from the 2nd Girls' Junior High School in her hometown [3], she moved to Switzerland to study Medicine at the University of Geneva. She obtained a medical diploma in 1906 based on the dissertation “A Case of Myeloid Leukemia in a Nine-Month-Old Infant”, prepared under the supervision of Edouard Martin, a pediatrician and a surgeon [4]. In 1907 she returned to the Kingdom of Poland and passed the Russian state exam at the University of Kharkiv (now Ukraine) to recognize her Swiss diploma. [3].
From 1907, she was associated with the neurological department of Edward Flatau at the Orthodox Jewish Hospital in Czyste (Warsaw), where she took a position as the first assistant. She was also appointed as an assistant at the Institute of Experimental Biology of Marcel Nencki. Her cooperation with Flatau resulted in numerous scientific works on the surgical treatment of spinal tumors and the case of verbal deafness [5,6]. She also collaborated with other outstanding Polish-Jewish neurologists, such as Władysław Sterling and Teofil Simchowicz [7]. In 1909, she worked at the Kochanówka Hospital near Łódź with Antoni Feliks Mikulski.
She belonged to the Polish Psychiatric Association. At the congress of Polish psychiatrists in Lublin and Chełm in 1936, she delivered a paper "On the need to join the International League for the Care of Epileptic Patients." In 1925, she was one of the founders of the Association of Polish Women Doctors. In 1937, she was a delegate to the meeting of the Medical Women's International Association in Edinburgh. Under the pseudonym Maria Quieta, she published the novel Nowa Legend [8]. In 1938 she lived at Aleje Ujazdowskie 18/14.
During World War II, she stayed in the Warsaw Ghetto, where she continued her work as a doctor. She collaborated with Janusz Korczak in the Main Shelter House, in the foundlings' house on Dzielna Street [9], she organized summer camps for Jewish children [10]. She managed the clinic at ul. Elektoralna 32. On the night of September 23-24, 1942, she was deported to Pawiak, where she probably died. According to other sources, she was murdered on the Aryan side together with Dr. Zofia Garlicka [11,12].
Pawiak 1942
Her husband was Maksymilian Zand (1876–1932), a socialist activist [13].
Maksymilian Zand (1876-1932)
Eufemiusz Herman wrote about her in his posthumous memoir:
"Extremely hard-working, thorough and conscientious in her research, spontaneously and temperamentally treating all issues that were currently within her sphere of interest, uncompromising when it came to revealing the truth of a certain phenomenon or if the matter concerned her views on a given issue, attentive and caring towards to the sick, she took an active part in the social, scientific and medical life of Warsaw at that time” [2].
Natalia Zylberlast-Zand's research interests mainly concerned the histology and pathology of the brain and spinal cord. Her scientific work resulted in about 100 publications in several languages: Polish, French, German and English. Her work on mental disorders in cases of serous meningitis with chronic hallucinations and migraine was published in 1912 [14]. A year later, she published a publication on cerebrospinal syphilis [15], and in 1915 she described two cases of chronic tetanus caused by infected teeth [16,17].
Photos from Zandowa N. Splot naczyniowy (anatomia, fizjologia, patologia). Wydawnictwa Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego. Monografie z Pracowni Neurobiologicznej, 1928.
Her involvement in social work is also noteworthy. She gave advice on raising children at the University for All as part of the Pedagogical Section, an educational organization operating mainly among workers of the Kingdom of Poland [18].
Sterling W., Janowski W., Zylberlastówna N. (1917) Nowe sposoby badania rozwoju umysłowego dziatwy szkolnej. Herdan, Warsaw
She dealt with, among others, comatose encephalitis, pyramidal tracts, inferior olives, choroid plexus of the ventricles and cerebral rigidity [1]. She showed that meningitis in patients with organ tuberculosis has a different course. She gave three forms of meningeal reaction to tuberculosis infection in 1921, together with Flatau. She was the first to describe the oculodigital reflex in post-coma parkinsonism [2].
Zandowa N. Drgawki u dzieci: zarys kliniczno-teoretyczny. Warszawa: Warszawskie Czasopismo Lekarskie, 1931.
Photos from Zandowa N. Recherches expérimentales sur les mouvements involontaires. Bulletin International de l'Académie Polonaise des Sciences et des Lettres. Cl. de Médecine nr 4–6, 1937.
Zandowa N. Nowe pojęcia o odruchach. Warszawskie Czasopismo Lekarskie 5-6, s. 88–91, 110–112, 1937.
Zandowa N. Z patologii opon mózgowo-rdzeniowych. Warszawskie Czasopismo Lekarskie 19, 1938.
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