The Story of Dr Stella (1927-2006)

Abstract

A life of professional caring, research, teaching, and inspiration—this is the legacy of Dr Stella Zacharioudaki Van Praagh, MD. Among her many outstanding contributions, only a few are recorded here: (1) a new surgical operation for closing apical muscular ventricular septal defects, (2) a newly discovered form of anomalous pulmonary venous drainage and its surgical repair, (3) a new understanding of sinus venosus defects and their surgical repair, (4) the realization that the concept of atrial-level isomerism (mirror-imagery) in the heterotaxy syndromes of asplenia, polysplenia, and single right-sided spleen is erroneous, (5) the understanding that it is possible to diagnose the atrial situs in the majority of cases of the heterotaxy syndromes, and (6) the fact that the concepts of evolution, natural selection, and survival of the fittest were described by Empedocles, an ancient Greek philosopher, in the fifth century bc, and that these concepts were not discovered and published for the first time by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace in the 19th century (1858 ad). Dr Stella was conversant with ancient Greek and read it frequently in an ancient Greek study group that she headed. Dr Stella translated from ancient Greek into English a portion of Aristotle’s The Physics in which Empedocles’ understanding is cited at length. There is no doubt about what Empedocles thought.