Alexandru A. Suțu

He was born in Bucharest into the aristocratic Soutzos family; his father Alexandru Sutzu was high vornic and cămăraș (official in charge of the royal court's pantry).

Suțu began school in his native country before entering the University of Athens, where he studied from 1856 to 1862 and obtained a doctorate in 1863.

[1][2] Unhappy with the education he received,[2] he went to the medical faculty of the University of Paris, where he obtained a second doctorate in 1865, dealing with dyspepsia.

[1] At Mărcuța, he established a new type of specialized, clinical practice; he and his colleagues and disciples drew on a wide range of French, English and German models of psychological medicine, such as: Philippe Pinel and Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol's paradigm of mental alienation; John Conolly's doctrine of non-restraint; Jean-Pierre Falret's theory of the clinic; Bénédict Morel and Valentin Magnan's ideas on hereditary degeneracy; Charles Darwin's theory of evolution; and Wilhelm Griesinger's principle of the organic nature of mental illness.

[3] Overall, his objective at Mărcuța was to transform it from a place of isolation and detention into a modern medical institution that would cure patients and return them to society.

[1] In 1874, Suțu published an article in which he established a direct relationship between heredity and the degeneration of nations; his ideas were a precursor of eugenics.

He trained assistants to diagnose dangerous mentally ill patients based on their antisocial reactions, confining them in asylums and providing them with humane care.