Why doctors in Russia were called "choleric", and how the Russian people resisted the "murderers"

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

One of the sad realities of our time is the low level of trust in official medicine, as a result of which thousands of people go with their ailments to healers, sorcerers, psychics. Conflicts in the field of doctor-patient relations have almost always occurred. Back in the early twentieth century, Vikenty Veresaev, in his "Notes of a Doctor", lamented that the most ridiculous rumors were spread about doctors, they were being presented with impossible demands and ridiculous accusations. But the roots of the trust deficit go back even further.

"The most dangerous", or why among the population of pre-revolutionary Russia there was growing distrust of "lordly" medicine and doctors

In the Russian Empire, a very peculiar attitude of the common people to professional medicine developed - fear and suspicion, bordering on hostility. The main reason for this is the minimum number of specialists in cities and their practically absence in rural areas. For example, in the Samara province, before the Zemskaya reform of 1864, for one and a half million rural residents, there were only 2 doctors living in the village.

The health care reform has made a number of useful changes, but has not significantly affected the coverage of the population with medical care. Hospitals were concentrated mainly in the provincial centers, so only rumors about doctors reached the peasants, and these rumors were, as a rule, unflattering, scandalous, and even frankly monstrous. If it happened to someone from the village to get into the district hospital, then this charitable institution was sparsely furnished, overcrowded with a seriously ill and incurable urban poor. It is not surprising that the hospital made the villagers fearful and associated with the abode of death. And so the common people developed a wild opinion that doctors are the most dangerous people, capable of killing a person with their medicines, and it would be more accurate to turn to the nearest old woman healer for help.

Why the Russian people began to call doctors "choleric"

Particularly acute conflicts between ordinary people and representatives of "lordly" medicine arose during periods of massive outbreaks of infectious diseases, in particular, cholera epidemics, the first of which was recorded in Russia in 1829. In the minds of the people, the terrible disease and the doctors were inseparable. People did not think about which of these two components is the cause and which is the effect. Not understanding the essence of sanitary measures, they perceived the actions of doctors as something harmful and even dangerous. Treatment with mercuric chloride and carbolic acid, sprinkling with lime seemed to the ignorant people an attempt to poison or infect.

Sometimes the rejection of sanitary officials was caused by their tactless behavior: there were some among them who, for the sake of fun, could spray not only yards and premises, but also pantries, declaring with a grin that as cholera took everyone away, food would not be needed. The desire of doctors to isolate the sick with suspected cholera terrified people, because in their understanding the hospital was something akin to the dead, where the "healed" poor were taken to death. Thus, among the people arose and strengthened the conviction that cholera is the product of doctors, and the murderers of Aesculapius received the nickname “cholera”.

The tragedy of Molchanov, or what caused discontent among the people and how they dealt with the doctors

The wave of cholera riots of 1892-1893, which swept along the Volga from Astrakhan to Saratov, brought a lot of troubles. A large number of doctors and nurses became victims of the pogroms. The tragic event in the district town of Khvalynsk, where the crowd brutally torn apart Dr. Alexander Molchanov, received the widest response. This was discussed in the press, in the high society of the capital and even in the imperial family.

Molchanov's fatal mistake was that he did not realize the importance of informing the population. The doctor did not bother to tell the townspeople for what purpose the cholera barracks were being built, did not explain the essence of the disinfection measures he was conducting. The situation in Khvalynsk was tense because of rumors from everywhere about the atrocities of doctors, allegedly poisoning ordinary people, infecting him with cholera. On the streets there was a lively discussion of gossip that villainous "cholera" were digging graves, storing lime and coffins. The universal hatred was automatically transferred to Molchanov.

The impetus for the rebellion was the story of a local shepherd that he saw with his own eyes how a doctor outside the city lowered bags with some kind of medicine into the springs, after which the cows who had drunk the spoiled water died. In a rage, the Khvalynites trapped Alexander Molchanov on the street and staged a bloody massacre. Fists, sticks, stones were used. Having beaten the doctor to death, people did not calm down: they did not allow the body to be removed from the street, and even the next day they mocked him. Only the troops that arrived two days later managed to restore order in the city. According to the verdict of the military district court, four rioters were subjected to the death penalty, about sixty people were sent to hard labor.

How Nicholas I pacified cholera riots

The summer of 1831 became a difficult test for the northern capital, when over three thousand people fell ill with cholera within two weeks. According to experts, the source of its distribution was the so-called gluttony rows of the Hay Market. The order to close the grocery stalls naturally displeased the merchants, and they set the crowd against the doctors. They were convinced that there was no cholera, and that doctors in hospitals were just poisoning the poor people.

Not thinking about the fact that not only commoners, but also noble nobles die from a terrible disease, the maddened crowd rushed from the Seine square to the central cholera hospital and defeated it in a matter of minutes. They beat up a hospital servant, killed several doctors, and carried patients out of the wards onto the street right on their beds, thereby spreading the disease.

The troops who arrived to pacify the revolt had to spend the night in the square. And the next day, Nicholas I appeared on the Haymarket. The Emperor gave a speech to a crowd of five thousand. Eyewitnesses described this historic moment in different ways. Some argued that the emperor appealed to the conscience of his subjects and urged them not to become like the violent French and Poles. According to the testimony of others, he pacified the rebels with strong, open-air abuse. He also drank a bottle of cholera remedy in front of everyone. But be that as it may, the sovereign emerged victorious from this confrontation, and his triumph was immortalized in a bas-relief on one of the monuments to Nicholas I in St. Petersburg.

A century earlier Muscovites started a plague riot, killing the Metropolitan.