Abstract:
Leonhard Euler was one of the most eminent mathematicians of all time. In 1735, he developed right periocular swelling, partial loss of vision, and the onset of lifelong recurrent fevers from a heretofore-unknown affliction. Three years later, he developed an infection in the right eye area resulting in right eye blindness, a drooping right upper eyelid with a smaller right pupil, and a right vertical eye muscle imbalance. In 1771, complications from a left cataract operation rendered him almost totally blind now in both eyes. On 18 September 1783, Euler lost the remaining vision in his left eye, and later that day died suddenly from a presumed brain haemorrhage.
For centuries, an essential part of the Russian diet had been raw milk, the consumption of which is a significant risk factor for brucellosis (undulant fever, the most common endemic zoonosis) which was endemic in Russia in the eighteenth century (and still is today). Given the history of an acute recurrent infectious febrile illness with ophthalmic and neurological complications and having the probable terminal event being a haemorrhagic stroke, Euler’s most likely posthumous diagnoses are ocular, systemic, and neuro-brucellosis with a cerebral haemorrhage from a ruptured Brucella-infected aneurysm.
Biography:
Dr. Bullock is a forensic medical historian who was previously an ophthalmologist, microbiologist, and infectious disease epidemiologist. He held a clinical faculty position at Stanford University before coming to Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, where he served as professor and chair of the Department of Ophthalmology, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, professor of mathematics and statistics, professor of physiology and biophysics, clinical professor of community health, clinical professor of population and public health sciences, and was named the Brage Golding Distinguished Professor of Research. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Medical School, and Harvard Medical School, and completed an internship in internal medicine at Washington University in St. Louis before serving as a medical officer in the United States Navy. After residency training in ophthalmology (and plastic surgery) at Yale University, he completed fellowships at the University of California, San Francisco, and the Mayo Clinic. He received a Master of Science degree in Microbiology and Immunology from Wright State and a Master of Public Health degree (emphasizing quantitative epidemiology) from the Harvard School of Public Health. He also completed additional training from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He is the author/co-author of more than 260 scientific publications, predominantly related to infectious diseases, toxicology, trauma, and medical history and has given over 500 lectures throughout the world. He discovered three new causes of blindness and elucidated the etiology and/or description of ten different retinal disorders. Dr. Bullock (and co-workers) investigated a worldwide epidemic of infectious blindness which they traced to an improperly bottled and stored over-the-counter contact lens solution. Their subsequent ten peer-reviewed research papers, including one in the New England Journal of Medicine, documented that, at high temperatures, the plastic containers absorbed the solution's preservative, allowing fungal growth, leading to ocular infections, visual impairment, and blindness. His current research interests relate to the history of medicine. His historical publications have included investigations of the blindnesses of Louis Braille, Dom Perignon (the credited inventor of champagne), and the Biblical St. Paul, among others. He published a new theory to explain the origin of the anthrax spores during the sixth plague of Egypt and is currently researching the famous aviators, Wilbur and Orville Wright, and their genetic predisposition to typhoid fever. In his retirement, he resides in Massachusetts and Florida.
