Constantin Parhon

Born Oct. 28, 1874, in Cîmpulung; died Aug. 9, 1969, in Bucharest. Rumanian physician, biologist, and public figure. Member (1938) and honorary president of the Academy of the Socialist Republic of Rumania; Hero of Socialist Labor of the Socialist Republic of Rumania (1954). Member of the Communist Party of Rumania from 1944.

Parhon graduated from the University of Bucharest in 1898. In 1912 he became head of the subdepartment of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Iasi, and in 1934 head of the first subdepartment of endocrinology established in the country, at Bucharest. In 1946 he organized the Institute of Endocrinology and became its director. He was scientific director of the Institute of Geriatrics.

Parhon’s principal works concerned neurology, psychiatry, general pathology, the activities of endocrine glands and their influence on the process of aging, the evolution of the endocrine system, the physiology of hormones, and the problem of endemic goiter. In 1951, together with his student A. Asian, he began treating geriatric diseases with Novocain.

Parhon was president of the Presidium of the Grand National Assembly from 1947 to 1952. In 1947 he became a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. He was chairman (from 1944; honorary chairman from 1967) of the Rumanian Society for Friendship with the USSR (ARLUS). He was awarded the Order of Lenin.