Gregory Tsoucalas
During 1829 in the city of Nauplion, Theodoros Konstantinidis was born. He had studied medicine in Athens, Wien, Paris and Berlin, where he had supported his doctoral thesis. In 1856 he had returned in Greece to work in "Astyclinici" and "Elpis" Hospitals. He had soon become professor of Artistic Anatomy and Epidesmologia, professor of Surgery, elected as Dean and eventually Rector of the Athenian University. Dedicated to his love for the ancient Greek medicine, font of Aretaeus of Cappadocia, he had changed his name to Theodoros Aretaios. He was the writer of a substantial number of medical treatises, member of the "Athenian Medical Society", editor in medical journals of the era, and a pioneering surgeon with a worldwide fame, who firstly performed a pediatric tracheotomy due to laryngeal diphtheria in modern Greece. He had been operating all his life common people from all over Greece. He left a bequest for the first Surgical and Obstetrical Clinic of the Athenian University to be built, bearing his name, "Aretaieion Hospital". In March 1893, he died and all Greece felt in heavy mourning for its benefactor.
