Volume 47 No 1 2006

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Gold Medal Award of the IAP

Shinichiro Ushigome was awarded a Gold Medal from the IAP for his career long contributions to the Japanese Division and to the International body.

Shinichi is a member of a family of medical practitioners. His grandfather was a physician, his father was an orthopaedic surgeon and his son is a colo-rectal surgeon. During his undergraduate days, he used to assist his father at his operations and he thought that he might become a surgeon, but on mature reflection, he became a pathologist.

He graduated from Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo, one of the oldest medical schools in Japan, in 1958. He did his Residency at the Air Force Hospital in Tokyo, and apart from his busy medical duties at the hospital, he started to learn English and to support himself by doing night calls for guests at the New Otani Hotel. (In those days, Residents and trainee specialists did not receive any pay.)

In 1960 he sat for and passed the ECFMG examinations that made him eligible to work in the USA. With encouragement from staff at the Air Force Hospital, he applied to work with Harlan Spjut at Baylor College in Houston. He spent 1961 and 1962 there and this provided the foundation for his life long interest in Bone and Soft Tissue pathology.

He arrived in Houston as a somewhat lonely bachelor in a foreign country. There he met Minoru Suzuki who left Japan for post graduate study in Houston shortly after World War 2. By this time Minoru was a full Professor at Baylor. He and his wife, Taeko, were very kind to the lonely bachelor. They have been firm friends ever since.

Harlan Spjut became a life long friend, too. Harlan was one of Lauren Ackerman’s first Fellows in St. Louis. Shinichi remembers spending a memorable week with them both in Ackerman’s home at Long Island in 1985 when they were on a panel of experts discussing nomenclature of Bone Tumours.

On his return to Japan in 1963 he became Assistant Professor (unpaid for 1 year) at Santa Marianna University in Kawasaki City south of Tokyo. In 1968 he became a full Professor, and married Yumiko. In 1985 he was appointed full Professor at his alma mater, Jikei University.
In 1980 he became Secretary of the Japanese Division of the IAP. His interests in the IAP were expanded when he moved to Jikei. He helped to increase the membership of the Japanese Division, and to interest his contemporaries and his younger colleagues in expanding their interests beyond Japan.

He became an active member of the International interest group in Bone and Soft Tissue pathology. In this environment he met Philip Allen from Australia. He and a number of his Japanese colleagues proposed to Phil that they should form an organization of IAP Divisions from the Asia Pacific Region. Phil arranged for the Australasian Division to host the first meeting of this organization in Sydney, Australia in 1995. This was a successful venture, and the fourth meeting of this group was held in Beijing in 2005.

Shinichi gradually became the ‘Face of Japanese Pathology” at IAP meetings. As President of the Japanese Division, he led the successful bid for the Division to host the 2000 Congress in Nagoya. He was President of the IAP from 2002-2004 and was President for the 2004 Congress that was held in Brisbane, Australia. As President he did a lot of travelling, helping to build bridges between pathologists in Divisions around the world. He found this period of his career very rewarding.

He retired from Jikei in 2000 with the honorary title of Visiting Professor. He then went to work again at his first University in Kawasaki City which is now called Kyung Hee University College of Medicine. He continues to work as a pathologist and to spread interest in the IAP in Japan, neighbouring countries and countries further afield.
Robin Cooke

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Pierre Masson – Pathologist Extraordinaire of France and Quebec

Masson in his Montreal laboratory soon after his arrival in Montreal.

Pierre Masson was one of the great anatomic pathologists of the 20th century (Fig. 1). He was born in 1880 in Dijon, France, and studied medicine in his hometown and in Paris. Early in his career, he became interested in histological technique, introducing saffron as a stain for collagen and devising the famous trichrome stains with which his name has become associated. His talent for histologic observation combined with his interest in innovative staining techniques yielded a number of discoveries, including detailed descriptions of the neuroendocrine (enterochromaffin) system of the gastro-intestinal tract and carcinoid tumours of the appendix.

Masson’s early work at the Pasteur Institute and the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris was interrupted by World War I. At the end of the conflict, France regained Alsace and its capital Strasbourg, which had been annexed by Germany following the war of 1870. Masson was named to the Chair of Anatomical Pathology of Strasbourg, succeeding von Recklinghausen, Chiari and Mönckeberg. Within a few years, he developed the Pathology Institute into a vibrant center to which visitors and students flocked from around the world. In 1923, he published a book entitled “Tumeurs: Diagnostics Histiologiques” which soon became a bible for pathologists. Continuing his research work, he provided descriptions of intravascular hemangioendothelioma (Masson’s angioma) and glomus tumours, and investigated the histogenesis of pigmented nevi.

Drawings from “Tumeurs: Diagnostics Histiologiques”. A: Intestinal metaplasia of the stomach (hemalum, metanil yellow, mucicarmine). B and C: Fibrocystic disease of the breast (A-columnar cell change, B-apocrine metaplasia; hemalum, erythrosin, saffron). (From the Masson exhibit, University of Montreal).

In 1927, answering the call of “my Canadian cousin”, Masson moved to Montreal to take the position of Chairman of Pathology at the University of Montreal, as well as Director of Anatomic Pathology at three associated teaching hospitals (Notre-Dame, Hôtel-Dieu and Sainte-Justine). He accepted the position for a period of 3 years; however, as he noted much later, he added a zero to the three to make 30 and remained in Quebec for the remainder of his life. As in Strasbourg, he created a school dedicated to excellence in research, teaching and the practice of anatomic pathology. His success can be measured in part by the many young physicians who chose anatomical pathology as their specialty and who went on to practice in hospitals throughout the province of Quebec and elsewhere. He also continued his own study of tumor pathology, adding to descriptions of carcinoid, melanogenic and glomus tumours, the histogenesis of tumours of the nervous system, and spermatocytic seminoma. A revised edition of his book on “Tumeurs” appeared in 1956 and an English translation was published in 1970.

Masson died in 1959 at the age of 79, having received a number of awards and honors. He was decorated with the Légion d’Honneur and became a member of the French Academy of Medicine. In 1997, he was elected to the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame and, at the 1998 meeting of the USCAP in Boston, he was included as one of four “giants” of Surgical Pathology by the History of Pathology Society. His influence is also recognized by the Quebec Association of Pathologists, which awards the Prix Masson to a distinguished Quebec pathologist every two years. A display that documents many aspects of Masson’s life and work is open to the public at the University of Montreal.

Rick Fraser and Gilles Tremblay
McGill University, Montreal, 2005

References
Michalany J, Pierre Masson: master and friend. Am J Dermatopathol 7:145-149, Suppl, 1985.
Moore S, Seemayer T A, Tremblay G: The career and influence of Pierre Masson (1880-1959). Int J Surg Patholol 9:231-236, 2001.


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