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Vilém Lambl (1824–1895)

A portrait and a biographical note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2009

Clifford Dobell
Clifford Dobell
Affiliation:
National Institute for Medical Research, London, N.W. 3
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Extract

Very little appears to be known—at least by students of intestinal protozoa, and general parasitologists—about the man whose name now lies entombed in the familiar flagellate genus Lamblia. We all know, of course, the organism to which this name was given by Blanchard in 1888, and we are all aware that it was dedicated to a person called Lambl, who is popularly supposed to have discovered it. We all know also that Blanchard's genus had been forestalled by Kunstler's Giardia (1882), though many of us continue to use the first name in everyday speech; while some of our less cautious writers, even now, continue to ascribe to Lambl the discovery of the intestinal amoebae of man.

Type
Research Article
Information
Parasitology , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , April 1940 , pp. 122 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1940

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References

1 A copy of this photograph has now been added to the collection exhibited in the Molteno Institute, Cambridge.

2 2 There is much confusion, in the literature, about Lambl's initials. He is often cited as “W. Lambl” or “D. F. Lambl”. His first name, however, appears to have been Vilem, which he germanized to Wilhelm when writing in German. Dusan was his second name, while the patronymic Fedorovic Was used by him only when writing in Russian and similar languages. In his famous memoir of 1860 his name is printed simply as “Dr. Lambl”–without any initials.

1 Lambl's second paper (in Loschner & Lambl, 1860) is now very difficult to obtain. I have found no copy in any of the great medical libraries in London. There is one, however, in the British Museum; but I did not succeed in tracing it–owing to the way in which it was entered in the catalogue–until shortly after the last war. Although the paper has been extensively cited by British authors, this copy had never been read previously by anyone. At the beginning of 1919 it was still “unopened”, and I cut its pages myself.