#missolonghi

Eugène Delacroix (FR, 26 Apr 1798 - 1863) 

La Grèce sur les ruines de Missolonghi, 1826 (Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi) Oil on canvas: 209 x 147 cm Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux img color/tone edited

Missolonghi was besieged in 1822, 1823-24 and 1825-26. After failed exit(s), the last defenders blew themselves up, in April 22, 1826 (lord Byron died April 9, 1824, during the 2nd siege)

This major catastrophe was a decisive turning point before the reluctant intervention of the Great Powers* who's support would prove decisive for modern Greece to gain it's independence.

*In 1814, diplomats recognized five great powers: France, Britain, Russia, Austria (in 1867–1918, Austria-Hungary) and Prussia (in 1871–1918, the German Empire). Italy was added after its unification in 1860 ("Risorgimento") In 1905 Japan and United States, joined the group.

Greece was under Ottoman rule for nearly 400 years after 1453, when the Ottoman Turks invaded Constantinople, vanquishing the Byzantine Empire, Greece was among the countries that languished under their regime.

Greek Revolution/War of Independence (1821–1829) inspired Delacroix: with The Massacre of Chios from the Salon of 1824 and Missolonghi, 1826, contributed to a positive "air" of compassion for the rebel Greeks...

Delacroix’s Greek Revolution

Nov 1, 2021,

“Art of Revolution” series

https://www.eugene-delacroix.com/greece-on-the-ruins-of-missolonghi.jsp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_War_of_Independence

“Les païens venaient pour Athéna. Les croyants pour Jésus. Les ultras pour la croix. Les libéraux pour la liberté. Les progressistes pour le peuple. Les érudits pour les statues. Les briscards pour la bagarre. Les jeunes pour la jeunesse. Les mystiques pour la civilisation. Chacun affublait les guérilleros grecs - armatoles et klephtes - de son propre plumet. Les motifs variaient, l’adversaire ne variait pas. L’ennemi était le point de convergence de cette armée baroque et fatigante. Ainsi de toute union sacrée. Elle concilie les contraires tant que l’ennemi fait le ciment. Et Missolonghi devint la grandiose kermesse des convictions, permettant l’amalgame (ce mot superbe) de toutes les nuances du génie européen.”

Today, on 19th April 1824, George Gordon Byron, 6th Lord Byron and Baron of Rochdale, died in Missolonghi (Greece) of cerebral fever. Here's one of his last poems, prophetically titled Love and Death. It's addressed to his last love, his Greek page Lukas Chalandritsanos.

1.

I watched thee when the foe was at our side,

Ready to strike at him—or thee and me,

Were safety hopeless—rather than divide

Aught with one loved save love and liberty.

2.

I watched thee on the breakers, when the rock,

Received our prow, and all was storm and fear,

And bade thee cling to me through every shock;

This arm would be thy bark, or breast thy bier.

3.

I watched thee when the fever glazed thine eyes,

Yielding my couch and stretched me on the ground

When overworn with watching, ne’er to rise

From thence if thou an early grave hadst found.

4.

The earthquake came, and rocked the quivering wall,

And men and nature reeled as if with wine.

Whom did I seek around the tottering hall?

For thee. Whose safety first provide for? Thine.

5.

And when convulsive throes denied my breath

The faintest utterance to my fading thought,

To thee—to thee—e’en in the gasp of death

My spirit turned, oh! oftener than it ought.

6.

Thus much and more; and yet thou lov’st me not,

And never wilt! Love dwells not in our will.

Nor can I blame thee, though it be my lot

To strongly, wrongly, vainly love thee still.

A bright Greek doctor I had to read an American medical book to find out about.

These days I just finished reading the critically acclaimed book "Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health" written by American surgeon and oncologist Marty Makary, who is currently the 27th Commissioner of Food and Drugs, which is the head of FDA in the USA. Let's get the elephant out of the room and say Makary was appointed in this position with Trump's blessings probably because he was against the obligatory application of the Covid-19 vaccine or maybe because he seems to lean in the conservative side or both. While reading the book however, I didn't see him be against safe, well studied, contemporary medical practices or against vulnerable communities such as women and AIDS sufferers. That's so far my exposure to Makary as a personality of medical influence goes, but I did find the book to be extremely eye-opening.

The book discusses numerous - often shocking - harmful and wrong beliefs held traditionally in the (usually western) healthcare systems, which often caused unnecessary suffering and even death to millions of patients and marginalized the few bright minds of the medical sector whose discoveries and methods did not agree and tried to change the standard traditional beliefs. In this sense, what happened to the Greek doctor Ioannis Lykoudis is not different from what has happened to numerous other doctors and scientists who have been ignored or wronged across the world, but this is the case it makes sense to write about in this blog.

Gastrointestinal ulcers are a condition that has been observed since ancient times, even by Hippocrates. For decades well into the 20th century, doctors would define "stress and anxiety" as the leading cause of GI ulcers and associated it to neurological etiology, which Makary confirms to be the medical synonym of "we don't know". The traditional treatment for a serious GI ulcer was a pretty complex abdominal surgery, which Makary reveals he has performed many times in the past, and thousands of people suffering from GI ulcers underwent this very serious surgery.

Makary said however that there was a Greek doctor in the 60s, Ioannis Lykoudis, who cured thousands of patients with simple antibiotics and was punished for it by the Medical Association of Athens, whereas two Australian doctors later investigated his practices and the discoveries they made ended up earning them the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005.

Ioannis Lykoudis was born in 1910 to a humble family of farmers in Missolonghi, Greece. Distinguished for his brilliance and his ethos from an early age, he studied medicine in the Military Medical School of Athens. After he contracted tuberculosis, he abandonded his military career and returned to Missolonghi to practice civil medicine. He was notable for not accepting money from his poorer patients and he frequently required from the drug stores to provide medicine to his patients for free and he went and paid for them later with his own money. His fellow citizens did acknowledge that much in him and thus elected him twice as mayor of Missolonghi, from 1952 to 1959.

In the '30s already he had figured a way with his personal limited means to turn pills treating malaria into injectables, maximizing their potency. Around 1957, he fell ill with GI ulcers and hemorrhagic gastritis and treated himself with antibiotics for the gastritis but he realised the drugs seemed to have positive effects on his ulcers as well. After this realisation, he started treating his patients with antibiotics too. It has been estimated that he treated a lot more than 30,000 patients, probably very few of whom ever needed to undergo a serious surgery for their ulcers, which was the standard practice elsewhere in Greece and the whole world at the time.

Furthermore, until 1960 Lykoudis had designed Elgaco, a concoction of antibiotics meant to treat ulcers. Makary emphasizes on the fact that Lykoudis did not use a single type of antibiotic but designed a specific combination of four antibiotics - to this day the indicated treatment for GI ulcers is a mix of at least two antibiotics and not just one. In the same year, Lykoudis arrived in Athens and tried to get his research known and his medicine officially patented. Instead, he faced the ironic comments of the responsible bodies and the rejection of his application with the decision of the Supreme Health Council of the time that “…as is well known, antimicrobial drugs not only do not benefit but also harm stomach ulcers”. Despite the negative decisions of all the competent bodies, Ioannis Lykoudis, certain that he was right, continued to prepare and administer his proprietary preparation to ulcer sufferers in his practice in Athens, reaching the point of preparing and administering 100–150 boxes of the preparation daily. It is impressive that his files, preserved by his son, also a doctor, Nikos Lykoudis, include 50,000 patients who received the preparation.

Meanwhile, he was given a fine of 4,000 drachmas by a disciplinary committee and was indicted in the Greek courts because it is formally prohibited for doctors to distribute medicines . He was unable to get an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and was not able to get the established pharmaceutical companies sufficiently interested in the treatment. In fact, he went so far as to sign a contract with the German multinational pharmaceutical company Bayer for the research and manufacture of the preparation but the agreement was canceled at the last minute because, according to company officials, his case radically changed the pathogenesis of the ulcer and the company was hesitant to assume the costs for the research and global distribution of the preparation!

Ioannis Lykoudis died in 1980, at the age of 70, deeply sorrowed by the way the medical community had treated him but he was still convinced he was correct. He was so sure that a little prior to his death he notably said to his family: "Bring it to my grave when they discover I was right all along".

Only two years later, in 1982, Australian Dr. Robin Warren and Dr. Barry Marshal performed the initial culture of Helicobacterium pylori and developed their hypothesis on the bacterial cause of peptic ulcers and gastric cancer. It has been claimed that the H. pylori theory was ridiculed by established scientists and doctors, who did not believe that any bacteria could live in the acidic environment of the stomach. Marshall was quoted as saying in 1998 that "everyone was against me, but I knew I was right". Makary explains that Warren and Marshal did base a considerable part of their theory upon the study of Lykoudis' practices. After also Warren and Marshal faced a lot scepticism from the medical community, Marshal resorted to consuming a culture of H. pylori to cause himself an ulcer (!) but he got an acute gastritis which he then treated with antibiotics. With time the medical community accepted that there were certain bacteria associated with gastritis and their chronic presence can also develop peptic ulceration. Marshal and Warren won the Nobel Prize for this discovery in 2005.

Robin Warren and Barry Marshal

In the year 2005 when Marshal and Warren won the Nobel prize, the Medical Association of Athens decided to revoke the condemning decree and the fine against Lykoudis, twenty five years after his death and six years after 1999, when a concise but comprehensive description of his contribution was published prominently in The Lancet, Department of History, entitled: “John Lycoudis: an unappreciated discoverer of the cause and treatment of peptic ulcer disease”, written by Feretis, Rigas and Papavassiliou. After the award of the 2005 Nobel Prize to B. Marshall and R. Warren, Lykoudis became more known at least to the medical community, but not in his country and of course was never acknowledged on a broader level for his contributions.

Ioannis Lykoudis (1910 - 1980)

In 2023 there was a ceremony in Missolonghi where a bust was raised in the doctor's memory... paid with the money of the Medical Association of Athens who obviously tried to redeem themselves. If nothing else, the ceremony was attended by his children and his surviving wife.

Sources:

Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health (2024) by Marty Makary

Ιωάννης Λυκούδης | Wikipedia

John Lykoudis | Wikipedia

http://www.gastro-care.gr/ιωάννης-λυκούδης-ο-μεσολογγίτης-ιατρ/

If you follow certain Greek blogs here or Greek history closely, perhaps you know by now that the Greek War of Independence (also known as the Greek Revolution) is a paramount historical period in the collective Greek conscience and certainly the most formative for the emergence of the finally statutory Greek national identity. Furthermore, it is also a major historical event of the Romantic Period, playing a significant role in the fall of empires, the establishment of democratic institutions but also the rise of ethnic states. While all this is not well known nowadays abroad, at its time it affected a considerable part of the world and it also birthed the biggest and most notable Philhellenic movements. West Europe studied and explored the pre- and post-revolutionary Greek world extensively. Nevertheless and maybe unsurprisingly, Turkey, the state descendant of the Ottoman Empire, never shared the sentiment. The Greek Revolution is rarely if ever discussed in Turkey and in Turkish schoolbooks it is presented as a minor revolt of ungrateful subjects that could not potentially harm the status of the mighty empire (that entirely dissolved a century later). The truth is that Turkey has an enormous archive of Ottoman documentation regarding the Greek revolution but there is no intention so far for it to be examined thoroughly and properly.

Here is however a letter, written by Netzip Efendi (hope this is written correctly), a representative of the pasha of Egypt to Constantinople after he was sent to Missolongi, to witness the siege of the city and ensure the cooperation of the Egyptian soldiers with the Ottoman Turks [context: Egypt was then a part of the Ottoman Empire and as such, Egyptian soldiers were sent to assist in the fights against the Greek revolutionaries]. This is a recollection of the events of 10 April 1826 (hence why I am posting this today), the day of the Sortie of Missolonghi, again, from an Ottoman perspective:

"The unbelievers [the Greek Christians] had fortified Missolongi so well that it was impossible to conquer it by assault. Although the islands Vasiládi and Anatolikó - the key to access Missolonghi - were taken and the isolation from land and sea was complete, for about fifteen days, there was still supplementation passing with small boats from Petalás island, as the natural landscape around Missolonghi made this possible. However, the Austrian consul in Préveza [the Austrian Empire had good relations with the Ottoman Empire and was opposed to the Greek Independence struggle] informed Ibrahim pasha and he shut those passages with fortifications, cannons and soldiers. When it was clear the bandits [the Greeks] were exhausted by the starvation, they were offered an amnesty several times according to the Sharia Law. But when they were given the document with the conditions of Ibrahim and Reşid Mehmed [who was known in Greece as Kioutahís and was ironically and tragically of Greek Orthodox descent...!] pashas, where they were explaining the procedure for the amnesty and they were annoucing the Sultan's mercy and grace, the bandits [Greeks] expressed their animosity and disdain with arrogant words, saying: 'We cannot surrender our seven thousand blood-stained weapons with our own hands'. They were hoping that supplies and soldiers would still arrive to support them and indeed thirty-five to forty boats with bandits showed up and a ruthless combat against the Imperial Navy commenced and lasted for two days. Thankfully, they weren't able to cause any harm to the Imperial Navy, even with their fire ships, while they suffered many losses and retreated towards the straits of Zakynthos and Petalás islands. The bandits in Missolonghi were then in despair. A muslim captive who fled from Missolonghi transferred to us the information that on Saturday sunset, the fourteenth day of Ramadan [10 April 1826] there would be even more reinforcements for the besieged coming from the mountains north of Missolonghi, behind the rear of our army, and then there would be a signal and the unbelievers inside Missolonghi would take their women and their children and they would all together launch out of the city. Immediately we took all necessary measures. Indeed, on Saturday evening, there were movements detected on the peaks of the mountains and a little later the bandits with their women and children exited from the eastern coast of Missolonghi. Since there were Egyptian soldiers on that side, when the Greeks attempted to pass through the fortifications, our soldiers confronted them with bravery and persistence, hitting them with the artillery and the rifles. Some of the unbelievers could not proceed farther and returned to Missolonghi, while others, ignoring their losses, ran towards the mountains but our soldiers followed them and slaughtered them on the way. During the sortie of the unbelievers the sky was cloudy. However, after their sortie, by Allah's grace, the clouds were gone and the moonlight was as strong as sunlight. At that moment, Colonel Hussein Bey of the 7th Order of the Egyptians launched with swords inside Missolonghi, through the fortifications in the sides from which the unbelievers had appeared. The bandits had placed gunpowder inside holes they had dug inside the city, and given that the windmill in the harbour of Missolonghi was a fortified stronghold, they had placed gunpowder there as well, and about three hundred unbelievers were trapped there too. At the dawn of Sunday, as they were lighting up the gunpowder and blowing up the holes, the sound of the explosions was relentless. Most of the bandits were blown up, very few were killed by the swords of our soldiers but our soldiers were allowed to pillage women, children and fortunes. Glory to Allah, it was a big victory. 1,734 pairs of ears were collected by the army of Ibrahim Pasha and 1,015 pairs collected by the army of Reşid Pasha, a sum of 2,749 pairs of ears were sent to Constantinople to be displayed and set an example."

Sources: Kathimerini newspaper, excerpt taken from the article written by Şükrü Ilıcak, Doctor of History in Harvard University and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean Studies and Aristides Hatzis, professor of Philosophy and Methodology of Law in the National Kapodistrian University of Athens, with the assistance of Anna Athanasouli, PhD candidate of History in the University of Crete.

The stats of the battle according to Wikipedia:

Golden sunset in the lagoon of Missolonghi.