History of Medicine

History

An Open Access Journal

Medical councils and doctors’ societies in Saint Petersburg in the first half of the 19th century

DOI: 10.17720/2409-5834.v3.2.2016.17v

Elena A. Vishlenkova

P.E. Ratmanov, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor at the Department of Public Health and Healthcare

Far Eastern State Medical University, Khabarovsk (Russian Federation)

The article discusses the history of medical management’s institutionalization in Russia in the first half of the 19th century. On the basis of documents from the archives of the Medical Council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and periodicals, the author traces the search for relevant organizational and self-organization models for Russian doctors. The views of government officials and the professional medical elite differed significantly. For government reformers, doctors were a group of officials called upon to instill social control and to provide medical assistance to the population. As such, they were treated as comparable to other similar classes of employees. At the same time, they possessed complex knowledge, which complicated the doctors’ management. In this regard, the “medical mission” (later the department) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Police and the Ministry of Education were supplemented by the Medical Councils – advisory bodies consisting of “renowned doctors”. Due to the concentration of highest state authorities, elite military units and higher medical schools in Saint Petersburg, the capital’s doctors (mainly military surgeons and physicians in ordinary) became the administrators of the Russian medical class. Germanspeaking doctors, involved in public administration in their Russian service, created at the beginning of the 19th century a society of German doctors – a kind of elite professional club. A change in the ethnic composition of the medical community due to the development of medical education contributed in the 1830s to the emergence of health administrators and physicians in ordinary of Russian origin. Competition with German tutors and other social issues resulted in the creation of the Society of Russian Physicians, the goal of which was the unification of Russian doctors into a professional medical community.

Keywords: history of medicine, service diaries, court medicine, physician-in-ordinary S.P. Botkin, S.P. Botkin as clinical psychologist, health and diseases of the Romanov dynasty, “everyday life history”

Partners

From 2021

The Journal is Published Twice a Year.

Founders of the journal

I.M. Sechenov

For Authors