PROFESSOR MATEI BALȘ, THE CLINICIAN WHO HIGHLIGHTED THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE CLINIC AND THE LABORATORY

Providential personalities have been writing history since the beginning of times – personalities that could be found within and across Romania’s borders [1]. In medicine, such brilliant figures have healed patients through diligence, dedication, and professionalism, but have also passed significant teachings to the next generations. They have rigorously respected an authentic professor’s definition, a figure that teaches and prepares specialists for the future. The great medical personalities, Ion Cantacuzino and Victor Babeș, have been mentored by famous professors, have also become famous professors on their own, and they have educated doctors and professors who have carried on their research and medical teaching legacies. Through study, through diligence, and an impressive personal development, their students have also become proficient figures in medicine [1-2]. They have trained personalities in the medical field that could have reached higher peaks, were it not for the political and social climate of their country. Among those, now we shall bring into discussion professor Matei Balș, a remarkable man and teacher, whose contribution focused the necessity of employing strict and correct means of practice, tying together in an organic way the clinical and the laboratory work, a dogma which he has passed on to his students. He has funded the “School of Infectious Diseases” at Colentina Hospital and has formulated teachings that stand the test of time; his working approach is still appropriate and praised today. The current generation as well as future ones not only have the obligation to recognise the exceptional achievements of our ancestors in history, but to also keep them alive and develop upon them, in the interest of the Romanian people, Romania itself, but also for the public health system at an international level [1].