Motto: "Everything can be found, if you are not running away from the hassle of searching." (Philemon)

History of the discipline is taken from the reverential volume dedicated to the centennial of "Victor Babes Institute" (1887-1897)    Author: St. I. Niculescu

The scientific research done in the normal and pathologic morphology field in our country is close related to the activity of the academic stuff in the medical higher education. Both anatomy (descriptive and topographic) and histology, embryology, forensic medicine and anatomical pathology were born and made their first steps in the same time with the first forms of medical education. First data appeared on anatomical pathology in the Romanian medical literature is found in the Eforie Civil Hospital regulations from Bucharest (1832) as well as in the Medical Sciences Society documents from Bucharest (1857) under the management of Dr. Nicolae Kretzulescu.

In terms of anatomical pathology, organizational bases of development of this discipline were laid by Dr. Carol Davila, who established this discipline at ColALea Hospital, where Polish anatomopathologist and anthropologist Izidor Kopernicki and Dr. Samuel Scheiber worked. Dr. Kopernicki organized the lectures and the practical sessions of anatomical pathology as follows: at the ground floor of the building were an amphitheater with a capacity of 50 seats and dissecting rooms each having 10 tables, and at the first floor there was a museum. Anatomical pathology discipline is operating inside "Victor Babes" Institute from 1930, having as tenured Constantin Bacaloglu (January 1^st 1930- December 15^th 1930)-

The oldest Medical Sciences Institute in our country, which today is named after its founder, Professor  Victor Babes, MD, PhD, was opened under the Law no. 1197 published in the "Official Monitor" nr. 21/28.apr.1887 as Bacteriology Institute subordinating the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which at that time had in the charge the issues related to public health.

After V. Babees came to Bucharest in August that same year, the building’s name becomes Institute of Pathology and Bacteriology, which worked under the auspice of Ministry of Public Instruction until 2^nd of March 1925, when, through a new law is receiving the name "Dr. Victor Babes" Institute.

The institute’s inauguration/opening took place at the board meeting on the 20^th of November 1887, when V. Babes hold the introductory lecture about the causes of infectious disease. "Anti-rabies Institute", part of the same institution, begins its activity in 1888; the 6^th of May of the same year, the first treatment made by V. Babes with a fixed virus gets registered. From a chronological point of view, the "Anti-rabies Institute" of Bucharest was the third in the world, and the introduction of rabies treatment in Bucharest followed after less than 3 years from its application on human, in Paris, by Louis Pasteur (July 6^th 1885).

When Victor Babes arrived in Bucharest, the Romania medicine was represented mostly by the medical school students from Carol Davila who were coping honorably with the current medical practice problems, meanwhile the scientific activity was almost inexistent, and the great progress achieved by the world medical science could not find practical applications in hygiene and prevention of infectious diseases or other diseases with broad social implications, as pellagra.

Romanian public opinion was sensitized by the prospects opened by the glorious discoveries of Pasteur, especially the rabies vaccination. During the meeting of the Assembly of Deputies, on March 10^th 1886, Dimitri Sturza and the Prime Minister Ion C. Bratianu insisted on the need for our country to send a doctor "to be made disciple of Pasteur" and whom "to give mister Pasteur a good opinion about our medical service".

In 1976 began the publication of Babes Vincent’s correspondence (1821-1907), distinguished jurist and Romanian academic, one of Banat’s representatives in the Romanian Academy, even from its founding, in 1866, and one of the founders of the Romanian National Party in the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, which provides us with significant data on the initiative adopted by Vincent Babes for bringing his son Victor in the country, then professor of pathological histology in Budapest, which became world known in the scientific world for his work in the fields of bacteriology and anatomical pathology. The earliest mention of this initiative is found in the letter to Vincent Babes, dated nov. 11/23 1883, from Vasile Maniu, another representative of Banat in the Academy, but permanently established in Bucharest.

Until the construction, in 1899, of the new Institute on the banks of the Dambovita, the Institute of Pathology and Bacteriology worked in an enormous but dilapidated building, the old Brancoveanu’s palace, a time also being the royal residence of Ruler Gheorghe Bibescu, situated on the current tower block at the end of Victory Boulevard and neighboring the Grand Court building. On that occasion, hastily improvised designs were made, allowing harboring of the laboratories, the rabies vaccination department, the stables, etc.

The new Institute, which included not only the anatomical pathology, bacteriology, serology and chemistry laboratories, several clean rooms, but also the Rabies Institute (with the rabies dispensary), a museum, a library, three practical halls for anatomical pathology and bacteriology for students and doctors, an autopsy room and a yard where there were breeders of small animals, stables, etc., functioned/ worked as such almost the entire duration of the ownership of V. Babes.

The true founder of anatomical pathology education was Victor Babes (1854-1926), who was able to create from these small beginnings a world-renowned Institute, and a tradition of teaching and scientific guidance which applies also nowadays. Encyclopedic personality and eminent student of Carl von Rokitansky, Rudolf Virchow (father of modern pathology") pupil and collaborator of Pasteur, Cornil, Charcot in Paris, Koch’s in Berlin, Arnold’s in Heidelberg and Bollinger in Munich, and Recklinghausen and Waldeyer’s in Strasbourg, Victor Babes was originally professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Budapest.

In 1887, by royal decree, V. Babes is called back from Budapest, and is named professor of experimental pathology and bacteriology, entrusting him at the same time the task of founding an institute of pathology and bacteriology, thing that got materialized in 1899, and from 1925 it was going to bear his name.

The scientific work of Victor Babes was extremely complex and broad. He published over 1300 papers, including 25 monographs, the most famous being Les bacteries et leur role dans l’etiologie, anatomie et histologie pathologique des maladies infectieuses(in collaboration with A. V. Cornil-1885), the world’s first treaty of bacteriology who won the Montyon Award of the French Academy, and which appeared in Paris in three successive editions (1885, 1886 and 1890).

In 1881 he discovered the glanders bacillus confirmed in 1883 by Leoffler. He described in 1889, for the first time in the pathology field, the rabies corpuscles from the cytoplasm of the neurons from Amon’s horn (hippocampus), discovery confirmed by Aldechi Negri in 1902. He also had important contributions in the study of tuberculosis, pellagra, cholera, leprosy, syphilis, babesiosis, the pathology of the nervous system and more.

To understand better the scientific blast brought by V. Babes, through his work to the Romanian medicine, it is enough to mention his students and main collaborators: Gh. Marinescu, C. Levaditi, I. Puscariu, P. Riegler, V. Sian, Gh. Proca, Fr. Rainer, St. Gh. Nicolau, M. Manicatide, C. Bacaloglu, A. Theohari, T. Mironescu, Titu Vasiliu, Aurel Babes et al.

After the death of V. Babes, professor Gheorghe Proca became the head of the Department of Anatomical Pathology until the assignation of professor C. Bacaloglu (1930); during this time, the lectures were held by Aurel Babes (founder of cervical-vaginal cytopathology by both straining mucous smears and systematization of the lesions). In the interwar period, anatomical pathology develops under the ways of Victor Babes, both in anatomic and clinical sides, by C. Bacaloglu and N. Gh. Lupu, and experimental cytopathology and oncology ways by Aurel A. Babes and Emil Craciun.

After 1949, the teaching and scientific activities are promoted in turn by: Augustin Muresanu, Grigore Pambuccian, Stefan I.Niculescu, Constantin Tasca, Ioan Moraru, Paul Nicolescu, Florin Halalau and Carmen Ardelean.