8 Russian doctors, thanks to whom the world has changed for the better

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

The 19th and 20th centuries became the era of breakthroughs in medicine from Russian and Soviet doctors. The names of many of our compatriots are inscribed in the history of science in golden letters - and we don't even really think about it. Many of them literally ushered in a new era in world medicine, becoming pioneers and founders of previously non-existent areas and radically changing their profession.

Nikolay Pirogov

Without a doubt, Pirogov became a real legend of Russian surgery - a child prodigy, a genius in adulthood, a man, in addition to his own medical discoveries, known for laying the foundation for the medical education of women in the country. The surgical techniques developed by him made it possible to resort to amputations much less often (yes, before him, very often, in any incomprehensible situation, they simply cut off a limb - as an alternative, there were sepsis and death). He was also the first in history to conduct operations on soldiers and officers wounded in the war under ether anesthesia and introduced a system for distributing the wounded in hospital according to the severity of the condition - both seriously increased the survival rate, as did the nursing service, created in collaboration with the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna. In fact, Pirogov is considered the creator of a separate direction in surgery - military field.

Having come up with the idea to anatomize corpses frozen - which made it possible to literally cut them into layers, which means to study more precisely - he created the first anatomical atlas, in which it was possible to look at the human body from the inside in three different projections. This atlas was indispensable in surgery before the invention of MRI and ultrasound.

It was also Pirogov who brought the plaster cast into the form in which it then existed for the entire twentieth century (and still exists perfectly). Humanity has known fixing bandages for a long time. For the first time in Europe, gypsum was invented as a material by the Russian doctor of German ethnicity Karl Gibental, and Pirogov significantly improved the technique of its application. This was another measure that reduced the number of amputations in medical practice in Russia and the world.

Vladimir Demikhov

The experiments of a Soviet scientist in transplanting dog heads onto the body of another dog seem to many Internet users - judging by the comments under the descriptions of the experiments - pure eccentricity of a scientist who wanted to shock the world or had fun as best he could. In fact, these experiments were of great importance for the development of transplantology, and the name of Demikhov was inscribed in the history of medicine in the twentieth century in golden letters.

In addition to experiments with dogs, Vladimir Petrovich was the first in the world to perform such operations as mammary-coronary bypass surgery, the connection of an artificial heart that he developed, as well as a number of organ transplants (on animals), and although these organs did not take root, the operations themselves helped to develop the technique suturing of vessels during transplantation.

In 1960, Demikhov wrote the world's first monograph on transplantation, which for a long time remained the only one of its kind - it was translated into several languages, and surgeons from several countries studied and performed operations on it. South African physician Christian Barnard, the world's first person-to-person heart transplant, came to the USSR to study with a Russian genius.

Nikolay Sklifosovsky

This Russian doctor of Moldovan origin is known not only for having raised a generation of wonderful surgeons, but also for being a pioneer in some areas - for the first time in modern medicine he applied local anesthesia (which was forgotten after the fall of ancient civilizations) and was the first to introduce disinfection of instruments and dressings before surgery. This literally ushered in a new era in surgery.

Very often Sklifosovsky is commemorated in connection with the achievements of military field surgery, but in fact Nikolai Vasilyevich undertook everything, including gynecological operations, somewhat improving the techniques of their implementation.

With regard to military field practice, Nikolai Vasilyevich developed the principle of saving treatment for gunshot wounds, proved that work with penetrating chest wounds must be done on the front line, without being sent to a rear hospital, and developed and described the principles of transporting the wounded.

Alexey Pshenichnov

For a long time it was believed that an ethical way to create a vaccine against typhus was not possible - the bacteria needed living human cells. Alexey Vasilyevich managed to cultivate them in … blood-sucking insects. The vaccine he developed as a result in 1942 was more relevant than ever - typhus was previously considered an obligatory companion of the war, and it was very important for the Soviet army to avoid non-combat losses. And there were an awful lot of combat.

Due to the fact that the officials understood the importance of Pshenichnov's development and immediately launched the production of the vaccine in several large institutes, the typhus epidemic that threatened the USSR and the Soviet army was prevented. If you remember that Napoleon's army lost a third of its soldiers to typhus, and Kutuzov lost half, Pshenichnov's work is more than impressive.

Zinaida Ermolyeva

In addition to typhus, cholera threatened the cities of the Volga during the Great Patriotic War. Fortunately, the question of cholera has long been dealt with by the Soviet scientist Yermolyeva. As a child, the girl from the Cossack village was struck by the story of the death of Tchaikovsky, who died from a glass of raw water, and she decided to definitely defeat the terrible disease. In the course of research, she even infected herself with cholera - and survived. She was then twenty-four years old. When Yermolyeva was invited to work in Moscow, she arrived in the capital with one suitcase - and it was all filled with test tubes with half a thousand cultures of cholera and cholera-like vibrios.

It was Ermolyeva who came up with the idea of disinfecting water in the city water supply with chlorine. In 1942, the Germans released cholera vibrios near Stalingrad to weaken the city's defenders. A group of Soviet scientists was urgently sent to the place together with Yermolyeva - they were carrying bacteriophages developed by them together, which were supposed to destroy vibrios in water. But the train came under bombardment, and the rescue tubes were broken. Yermolyeva urgently made up new drugs on the spot. The bacteriophage of its production was handed out to the Stalingrad people along with bread. It was the first biological barrier in history created on purpose for a besieged city against biological weapons.

Sergey Botkin

Russia is considered a pioneer in the field of mass female higher medical education. And all thanks to the Russian therapist Botkin. Back in the sixties, he began to prepare girls for admission to foreign medical universities, and at the same time he sought for them the right to receive education in Russia. In 1874 he organized a school for paramedics, and in 1876 - "Women's medical courses"; with an eye on Russia, began to open higher medical education for women and other countries. Sergey Petrovich also discovered hepatitis A and its viral nature - before him, this disease was considered simply a consequence of a mechanical retention of bile.

Ivan Pavlov

Even the shortest list of pioneers from Russia would be incomplete without the legendary Russian doctor Pavlov - he discovered the mechanisms of formation and extinction of conditioned reflexes, conducting experiments on dogs, and in fact created a new science - about higher nervous activity. It was also he who discovered the phases of sleep and created the doctrine of the signaling systems of the body.

Grunya Sukhareva

An outstanding Soviet psychiatrist of Jewish origin, who worked in Ukrainian and Russian clinics, was the discoverer of autism spectrum disorders - although for historical reasons (and a little, most likely due to some moral uncleanliness of one Austrian psychiatrist) Hans Asperger has long been considered such.

Grunya Efimovna went down in the history of psychiatry by finding out the patterns of the dynamics of schizophrenia, developing the evolutionary-biological concept of mental illness and doing much more, for which she is remembered as one of the founders of child clinical psychiatry.

By the way, about women and higher medical education - Non-acidic young ladies: Why Europe and Russia shook from Russian students in the 19th century.