---
title: "Francisc Rainer"
chunk: 2/6
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisc_Rainer"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:03:18.807273+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Iași career and World War I ===
Upon his return in 1912, Rainer became assistant professor at Bucharest. The following year, with referrals from Constantin Ion Parhon, he became chairman of the anatomy department at the University of Iași medical faculty. Soon after his appointment, with the outbreak of the Second Balkan War, he was mobilized in the Romanian Land Forces medical service. He barely escaped with his life when his automobile fell off the pontoon bridge at Nikopol. Upon his return, he busied himself with organizing his Iași department, supplying the microscopes, microtomes, thermostats, magazine collections and a projector for the faculty. Meanwhile, during this period, he was involved in scientific publication, sitting on the editorial board of Spitalul, writing for Romania Medicală and, in 1911, helping found the Paris-based Annales de Biologie.
According to Marta Rainer's own account, her husband's move to Iași at age forty marked the end of a "prolonged adolescence", settling Rainer on the path to professional success. As Rainer himself noted, teaching was a major responsibility: "I have always held the belief that there is no feeling so great, no thought so vast and deep, that they may not reach out to young minds and hearts." He set for himself the goal of answering to some of "the great issues of mankind", with "a prolonged action to strengthen my spirit." In his university lectures, Rainer taught that the purpose of medical science was human progress, "that we may always reach for something that is set higher". He also held that "each of us owes more to society than society owes us."
While in Iași, Rainer joined the left-wing literary circle formed around Viața Românească magazine, for which he contributed notes on medical science. He befriended the group's doyen, Garabet Ibrăileanu, whom he treated for his lung problems. Rainer persuaded Ibrăileanu, who was Marta's cousin, to hold courses in Romanian language and literature two evenings a week for medical students. His intention was to develop cultured doctors, and the students heard lectures by Mihail Sadoveanu, George Topîrceanu and Titu Maiorescu. He also took them for nature excursions so they could observe biological phenomena outside the laboratory. Rainer himself traveled extensively after 1914: among his earliest trips was a working visit to Odón de Buen's oceanographic institute in Palma de Mallorca.
In 1916, following Romania's entry into World War I, Rainer returned to Bucharest and rejoined Marta, being called up for medical service as a colonel. During the 1916 counteroffensive, the Rainers set up surgery wards in the hospitals that had become full to overflowing with wounded from the Battle of Turtucaia and the zeppelin attack on Bucharest. Later, during Bucharest's occupation by the Central Powers, Francisc Rainer established temporary hospitals in schools. He continued teaching under the German administration, so that his students would not miss a year, but was also obliged to teach separate courses for German students. He managed to prevent the occupying authorities from requisitioning the faculty's possessions. Viewed as political suspects, the Rainers were singled out for internment in Bulgaria, but spared by Minovici's intervention on his behalf. Marta Rainer, who managed war hospitals, organized teams of surgeons to help deal with the humanitarian crisis, and operated non-stop during the extremely cold winter of 1917–1918.
Following Romania's withdrawal from the war, Rainer resumed his contacts with Romanian physicians stranded on unoccupied territory. His wartime work in experimental surgery attracted young men and women, including some of his former students at Iași. They included Grigore T. Popa, who was selected for Rainer's permanent team during 1918. Other early members were Florica Cernătescu (Popa's fiancée) and Ilie Th. Riga. By late 1918, Rainer was conceiving of an education reform, aiming to compress theoretical aspects and "routine" work while providing students with as much laboratory experience as possible. His ideas were received with skepticism by the physiologist Ioan Athanasiu, who stood for the classical approach.
For a while in 1919, Rainer made a return to teaching in Iași, where he also resumed his activity in the fight against tuberculosis. After the Armistice of November signaled a worldwide return to peace, Rainer had to fend off allegations and angry students demonstrations, with allegations that he had been a turncoat and a collaborator of the Germans. During 1919, a commission of inquiry cleared his name, noting that he had displayed "absolute loyalty" to the legitimate Romanian government. He himself vouched for his colleague Ecaterina Arbore, arrested for her revolutionary socialist militancy. After the general strike of 1920 was broken up by the authorities, Rainer was part of the investigative commission which determined that the labor organizer Herșcu Aroneanu had been beaten to death.

=== Bucharest school of anatomy creation ===