[150 years since the birth of Thomas Ionescu (1860-1926)].

One of the most important surgeons of the 1900 period was the Romanian-born Thomas Jonnesco. He became a surgeon in Paris (1885-1890) under the guidance of D.M. Bourneville and J. Peyrot (Bicatre), P. Berger (Tenon), A. Le Dentu (St. Louis) and A. Verneuil (Pitié-Salpétrire). In 1894, he gained at the Paris Faculty of Medicine the title of professor of anatomy. In the same year he was selected by the professors Poirier, Charpy and Nicolas to be their collaborator in a treatise of anatomy, published in 1894. In 1895, he returned to Bucharest to lead the Institute of Topographic Anatomy and Experimental Surgery, especially created for him. He also accepted the Chair of the Clinical Surgery of Coltzea Hospital in Bucharest. In 1896 he founded in Paris the French periodical "Archives des Sciences Medicales'". Jonnesco was a prolific surgeon in the field of experimental surgery, especially cervical sympathectomy, general spinal anaesthesia but also in surgical oncology and genito-urinary field. He also drew clinical correlations on surgical techniques of gastrectomy for cancer, on total abdominal genital ablation as treatment for septic conditions of the uterus and the adnexa or on the large abdominal hysterectomy with complete ilio-lumbo-pelvic lymph node dissection in uterine cancer, which refined Wertheim's hysterectomy method. Thomas Jonnesco is now considered the founder of the modem Romanian school of