Video: In the fight against the "black death": how microbiologist Daniil Zabolotny "drove the plague into a tight corner"
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
In medical circles, the name of this outstanding Ukrainian scientist is known to everyone, but to the general public it is hardly familiar. Daniel Zabolotny went down in history as one of the founders of modern epidemiology, who was able to explain the causes of plague foci and find means of their localization. In the fight against deadly epidemics, he constantly risked his own life. As he put it, he wanted to "drive the plague into a tight corner, where it would die under a thunderous ovation from the whole world," and he succeeded.
Daniil Kirillovich Zabolotny was born in 1866 in Ukraine, in the village of Chebotarka (now - Zabolotnoe), Vinnitsa region into a peasant family. He lost his father early and received his education thanks to the relatives with whom he was brought up. First, he studied at the Novorossiysk (now Odessa) University and worked at the Odessa bacteriological station, and then entered the medical faculty of Kiev University, which was the center for the study of bacteriology and epidemiology.
After graduation, Zabolotny worked in Kamenets-Podolsk, where he organized a bacteriological laboratory. At that time, he was studying the epidemics of diphtheria, cholera and typhoid fever, and in search of serum against cholera, he decided to conduct an experiment on himself. He drank a live cholera culture and tested the action of the serum. The result lived up to his expectations and saved his life: the scientist laid the foundation for oral immunization, proving that you can be saved from cholera by administering a vaccine. Since then, cholera preventive vaccinations have been widely used in practice.
At the end of the XIX century. the scientist at the invitation of Ilya Mechnikov worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, was awarded the French Order of the Legion of Honor. Then he participated in expeditions to study the plague in India, Arabia, Persia, Mongolia, etc. The causative agent of the plague was discovered in 1894 - scientists proved that infected rats that penetrate onto sea vessels carry the plague into port cities. But the question of why the plague periodically breaks out in certain foci, including in the steppe areas, remained open.
Daniil Zabolotny and his students managed to find the cause of the "plague foci": he established that they are natural, and that wild rodents - gophers, marmots, gerbils, etc. become distributors. The scientist organized anti-plague laboratories in the steppe and desert zones in order to localize foci of plague. Thanks to his works, the principle of the geographical spread of plague on the globe was established.
Ilya Mechnikov once gave Daniil Zabolotny his portrait with the inscription: "To a fearless student from an admired teacher." The scientist really risked his own life more than once in order to save strangers. Once he became infected by pricking himself with a syringe needle in contact with a patient. Zabolotny was well aware of what this threatened him, and even wrote farewell letters to his loved ones. But the anti-plague serum taken in time saved his life.
At the beginning of the twentieth century. for over 10 years he has been fighting cholera in Scotland, Portugal, Manchuria and Russia. When in 1918 an epidemic raged in St. Petersburg, affecting up to 700 people every day, Zabolotny worked in the city's hospitals. He wrote about this period: “The use of mass preventive vaccinations was especially difficult. The main obstacle was the lack of laboratory glassware and culture media for the preparation of vaccines. We had to look for and requisition agar in pastry shops, use eau de cologne bottles as utensils, invent devices for heating thermostats, use bottles instead of ampoules and test tubes, but still prepare the required amount of vaccine and use it”.
Zabolotny's only son died early, and the scientist found solace in helping the orphans. He adopted 13 children and took care of their education. Zabolotny has published over 200 scientific papers devoted to the study of plague and cholera. His contribution to science has been recognized throughout the world. The Institute of Microbiology and Virology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, as well as streets in Kiev and Odessa, are named after Zabolotny.
The contribution of Russian scientists to world science is invaluable, another example of this is the story of how a Soviet female microbiologist overcame cholera and found a universal antibiotic.
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