Adamkiewicz was born in
Żerków. He earned his medical doctorate in 1873 from the
University of Breslau where he was a student-assistant to
physiologist Rudolf Peter Heinrich Heidenhain. From 1879 until 1892, he was chief of general and experimental
pathology at the
Jagiellonian University in
Kraków. Adamkiewicz is remembered for his pathological examinations of the
central nervous system. His research of the variable
vascularity of the
spinal cord was an important contribution to the development of modern clinical
vascular surgery. He is credited with describing the
major anterior segmental medullary artery, which is also known as the
Artery of Adamkiewicz. In the early 1890s, Adamkiewicz published a series of articles claiming the discovery of a cancer-causing
parasite he called
Coccidium sarcolytus, as well as the existence of an anti-cancer
serum. Further testing proved the serum a failure, and Adamkiewicz was severely criticized by the medical community at Jagiellonian University. Soon afterwards, he relocated to
Vienna, where he practiced medicine at
Rothschild Hospital. He is credited for the creation of the
Adamkiewicz test, a test for detecting
tryptophan, an α-
amino acid that is used in the
biosynthesis of
proteins. ==See also==