Podpułkownik profesor doktor medycyny Stanisław Józef Konopka (1896-1982) – lekarz, oficer Wojska Polskiego, historyk medycyny

Abstract

LIEUTENANT COLONEL PROFESSOR STANISŁAW JÓZEF KONOPKA, MD, PHD (1896-1982) – PHYSICIAN, POLISH ARMY OFFICER, HISTORIAN OF MEDICINE 

Prof. Stanisław Józef Konopka, founder and long-time director of the Main Medical Library in Warsaw, outstanding historian of medicine, and master of medical bibliography. During World War I he was an officer in the Austrian Imperial-Royal Army, and after Poland regained independence he served in the Polish Army until 1939 and reached the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the years 1918-1919, during the Polish-Ukrainian fighting, he took part in the relief of Przemyśl and Lwów, then he took part in the Polish-Bolshevik War in 1920. He completed his medical studies at the Faculty of Medicine at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, graduating in 1925. He received his doctorate in all medical sciences in 1930 at the Faculty of Medicine of the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów. In the years 1925-1939 he was the head of the Library and Medical Museum at the School of Sanitary Cadets in Warsaw. During the German occupation he participated in secret teaching, in 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo, he was imprisoned in Pawiak, and then in German concentration camps at Majdanek, Gross-Rosen and Litoměřice. In June 1945, he founded the Main Medical Library, which he directed and developed until 1970, and this institution became a significant centre in its category, not only nationally but also in Europe. In the years 1957-1972 he was the editor of the journal „Archive of the History of Medicine”. Author of over 420 published works, his life’s scientific work is the multi-volume Polish Medical Bibliography.