I look back

Professor Arnold Jirásek (1887-1960) entered wider awareness as the physician who operated on the mortally wounded Jan Opletal, but he was above all a founding figure of our neurosurgery and one of the most prominent figures of Czech medicine in the first half of the 20th century. His unfinished memoirs have been supplemented by the editors of the book, Martin Kučera and Jiří Vacek, with a collection of Jirásek's selected feuilletons from the Balkan wars and the most interesting reminiscences of his friends, pupils and wife. Also included were texts that Jirásek dedicated to other prominent physicians (Diviš, Pelnář, etc. ) and which show him as an insider historian of medicine understood in a broader cultural and historical context. In the final essay, the editor reconstructs the genesis of the rumour that A. Jirásek was the murderer of the prostitute Otýlia Vranská. It gives a brief account of the circumstances of the case and proves Jirásek's innocence on the basis of the facts available today.