page_title: Victor Gomoiu
section_title: Rise to prominence
hierarchical_section_title: Victor Gomoiu / Biography / Rise to prominence
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of Victor Gomoiu, Romanian surgeon and medical historian, Minister of Health in summer 1940.
context_page_description: Victor Gomoiu was a Romanian surgeon, anatomist, folklorist and medical historian, who served as Minister of Health and Social Protection in 1940. Noted before 1910 for his work in descriptive surgery and pathology, focusing on the treatment of tuberculosis, genital diseases and tumors, he soon became one of the main contributors to medical historiography and bibliography. He founded several hospitals and edited medical journals, setting up a collection of medical instruments which became the basis of a national museum in Craiova. He became a professor at the University of Bucharest, an expert for the League of Nations, and, after distinguished service in World War I, a recipient of the Legion of Honor; additionally, he served for 22 years as president of the International Society for the History of Medicine, of which his wife Viorica was also an active member.
  A protegé of Queen Helen and administrator of her Brâncovenesc Hospital, Gomoiu fell out with King Carol II, and was arrested in 1934 for protesting against his rule.
context_section_description: For his work as a military physician during the Romanian Campaign of World War I, Gomoiu was decorated with the Order of the Crown (1917), the Order of the Star of Romania (1918), and the Queen Marie Cross (1919). He subsequently served terms as head of the Union of Reserve Officers, and, in 1920–1921, was curator (or efor) of Bucharest's civilian hospitals. The author of Hommage a la France et aux médecins français ("A Homage to France and French Physicians", 1918), Gomoiu was made a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1922. Between 1919 and 1942, he was a surgeon at the Oradea war hospital and at two hospitals in Bucharest, also working at Brâncovenesc Hospital. Meanwhile, he held various leadership roles in medical societies and administrative bodies, and, in 1921, became a professor at Bucharest University.
  His work now included tracts in social medicine, the history of medicine and medical education. In 1923, he published the volume Din istoria medicinei și învățământului medical în România ("Briefs on the History of Medicine and Medical History in Romania"), followed in 1927 by Preoțimea în slujba operelor de ocrotire și medicină socială ("Priesthood in Service of Medical Care and Social Medicine"). The former essay, reissued in 1940 as Biserica și medicina ("Church and Medical Science"), showed Gomoiu as a deist, philosophically inspired by Isaac Newton and Giovanni Battista Morgagni. The work, which suggested that priests could work as "doctors of the soul", earned him a special prize from the Ministry of Health, led at the time by the priest Ioan Lupaș.
  Gomoiu also issued Istoricul presei medicale din România ("A History of Romania's Medical Press", 1925), and the second volume of Istoricul Societăței Studenților (1926). His first contacts with the International Society for the History of Medicine (ISHM) came in 1927 and 1928, when he sent in presentations on the first physicians active in the Danubian Principalities and the roots of Romanian ethnomedicine. In late 1927, on a visit to northern Europe, Gomoiu was impressed by Danish education. His article covering Danish libraries, and in particular the one Nikolaj Tower, saw print in Cuvântul daily and was also taken up in Școala Noastră.
  Gomoiu also became a trusted supporter of King Ferdinand I, managing the charity set up by his daughter, Princess Ileana. He was one of the specialists who assisted Ferdinand during his losing battle with colorectal cancer. In 1927, under Ileana's patronage, he set up the Sfânta Elena Hospital, in the working-class suburb of Bariera Vergului, Bucharest. He personally oversaw the pledge drive, collecting private donations and public money from the National Bank, the Ministry of Health and Căile Ferate Române, offering free medical services to the donors. Gomoiu also designed much of the building, modifying sketches by the architect Gheorghe Șimotta. In the end, the hospital developed into a regional model, being cited as such in League of Nations reports.
  Together with his friend Mihai Cănciulescu, Gomoiu edited Acta Medica Romana magazine from 1928 to 1948. There, the two led a sustained campaign for the establishment of a university at Craiova, and also contributed to the establishment of regional hospitals in Vânju Mare, Turnu Severin, and Mangalia. Considered a founder of medical history and museography in Romania, Gomoiu collected old publications, diplomas, decrees, instruments and medical or pharmaceutical apparatus. He founded the ISHN-affiliated Romanian Medical History Society, which held monthly meetings from 1929 to 1948 and was also placed under Princess Ileana's patronage. With his wife Viorica, herself a physician, Gomoiu organized and hosted the ISHM's September 1932 congress in Bucharest.
  For a while in 1930, Gomoiu served as secretary general in the Ministry of Health. In this capacity, he attended a conference on social hygiene in the French industrial hub of Tergnier, meeting with the organizer, Raoul Dautry. He also represented Romania on the League of Nations committee for physical education, inspecting the
caption: Gomoiu, photographed ca. 1932
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