Lucja Frey: A pioneering physician in tragic times

Intraparotid Location of the Great Auricular Nerve: A New Anatomical Basis for Gustatory Sweating Syndrome

BACKGROUND

Gustatory sweating syndrome (also known as Frey syndrome or auriculotemporal nerve syndrome) is thought to result from a lesion of the auriculotemporal nerve. A lesion of this nerve can lead to aberrant regeneration of nerve fibers to the sweat glands and blood vessels. The occurrence of signs outside the region of the auriculotemporal nerve prompted the author to search for another anatomical basis for this syndrome.

METHODS

The author dissected 46 great auricular nerves from their origin to the parotid gland and in the infratemporal fossa. The author investigated the different connections of the great auricular nerve with the facial nerve and the auriculotemporal nerve.

RESULTS

The great auricular nerve was found to essentially be a parotid nerve. There was a set of intraparotid nerve connections on 14 of the 46 half-heads that were dissected. The author was able to discern three types of parotid great auricular nerve connections, which he designates as either type 1, connection with the trunk of the facial nerve and its branches; type 2, connection with the auriculotemporal nerve; or type 3, connection with the auriculotemporal nerve and the facial nerve with the formation of an intraparotid nerve circle.

CONCLUSIONS

Having clearly established the nerve connections of the great auricular nerve, the author believes that it is primarily this nerve that is responsible for gustatory sweating syndrome. This allows for a better understanding of the sympathetic nervous system features and the manifestation of the syndrome outside the region of the auriculotemporal nerve.

Neuroscience in Nazi Europe Part III: victims of the Third Reich

In Part I, neuroscience collaborators with the Nazis were discussed, and in Part II, neuroscience resistors were discussed. In Part III, we discuss the tragedy regarding european neuroscientists who became victims of the Nazi onslaught on “non-Aryan” doctors. Some of these unfortunate neuroscientists survived Nazi concentration camps, but most were murdered. We discuss the circumstances and environment which stripped these neuroscientists of their profession, then of their personal rights and freedom, and then of their lives. We include a background analysis of anti-Semitism and Nazism in their various countries, then discuss in depth seven exemplary neuroscientist Holocaust victims; including Germans Ludwig Pick, Arthur Simons, and Raphael Weichbrodt, Austrians Alexander Spitzer and Viktor Frankl, and Poles Lucja Frey and Wladyslaw Sterling. by recognizing and remembering these victims of neuroscience, we pay homage and do not allow humanity to forget, lest this dark period in history ever repeat itself.

Lucja Frey (1889–1942): life destroyed by the Holocaust--on the 70th anniversary of her death

Lucja Frey was the first to explain the pathogenesis of the auriculotemporal syndrome, and the syndrome is recognized today as the Frey syndrome. Patients with this disease are subjected to paroxysmal paraesthesia of half of the face combined with sweating and redness. This syndrome can be found in the differential diagnosis of contemporary dermatology. Among others, it is differentiated from food allergies. The life and scientific career of Lucja Frey was brutally interrupted by the tragic times of the Holocaust.