Alfred Poland
Surgeon
1822 – 1872
Who was Alfred Poland?
Sir Alfred Poland was a 19th-century British surgeon. He is now best known for the first account of the condition later known as Poland syndrome, a congenital deformity now described as an underdevelopment or absence of the chest muscle on one side of the body and webbing of the fingers of the hand on the same side.
Poland described the disease that bears his name in 1841, in a paper titled "Deficiency of the pectoral muscles", in which he described the dissected body of Marc DeYoung, a deceased convict. He received the eponym more than a century later in 1962 through the recognition of British surgeon Patrick Wensley Clarkson after he operated on a case similar to that of Poland.
Alfred Poland was a modest, retiring man, who was quite careless about his appearance. He was warned by the Treasurer to dress more decently and cleanly, but ignored this advice. He was known by his colleagues to be an excellent surgeon, but would time his operations at unusual hours so that few observed him. Perhaps for those reasons, he had a small practice.
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