page_title: Ludwik Rydygier
section_title: Medical career
hierarchical_section_title: Ludwik Rydygier / Biography / Medical career
caption_attribution_description: The monument of Ludwik Rydygier. Photo made in Chełmno, Poland
context_page_description: Ludwik Rydygier was a Polish surgeon, professor of medicine, rector of the University of Lwów and Brigadier General of the Polish Army. He was one of the most distinguished Polish and worldwide known surgeons in the late 19th and early 20th century.
context_section_description: After studies, from 1875 to 1879 he worked in Gdańsk, Chełmno, Greifswald and Jena. Afterwards he was running a private clinic in Chełmno. There he wrote many of his papers in the field of surgery.
  In 1887 he was appointed to work at the surgery faculty at Jagiellonian University in Kraków.  In 1897 he was asked to lead the new surgery faculty and clinic at Lwów University, to which he agreed.
  He was at his time one of the most distinguished Polish and worldwide known surgeons. In 1880, as the first in Poland and second in the world he succeeded in surgical removal of the pylorus in a patient suffering from stomach cancer. He was also the first to document this procedure. In 1881, as the first in the world, he carried out a peptic ulcer resection. In 1884 he introduced a new method of surgical peptic ulcer treatment using Gastroenterostomy. Rydygier proposed (1900) original concepts for removing prostatic adenoma and introduced many other surgical techniques.
  Due to Prussian harassment, in 1887, he renounced Prussian citizenship, and obtained Austrian citizenship, and sold his clinic in Chełmno to Leon Polewski, one of his employees (Rydygier already lived in the Austrian Partition of Poland). He was dean of the Medical Department and in the years 1901–1902 functioned as rector of Lwów University. He was mentor to many surgeons and future professors. In 1889 he organized the first surgical conference in Poland. These conferences led to the establishment of Polish Surgeon Society. He didn't leave Lwów, even when he was offered to move to Charles University in Prague. He was an outstanding surgeon, well known for his practical achievements, as well as initiator of new methods  and a talented organizer. Some of his ideas, which include  gastric surgeries, surgery of rectal cancer, amputations, plastic, orthopedic and cardiothoracic surgery and urology are successfully used to date.
caption: Monument of Ludwik Rydygier in Chełmno
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