History of Medicine

History

An Open Access Journal

On the history of the creation of the Department of Pathophysiology at the Sechenov University

DOI: 10.17720/2409-5583.v5.2.2018.06fa

Larisa D. Maltseva,
Petr F. Litvitskiy,
Nikita A. Gorbachev,
Olga L. Morozova
FSAEI HE I.M. Sechenov First MSMU MOH Russia (Sechenov University)
8 Trubetskaya St., building 2, Moscow 119991, Russia


The main stages of the creation of the oldest Russian department of pathophysiology at the Sechenov University are presented in this article. The authors provide information on the origin of pathophysiology as an independent educational discipline and scientific specialization, and on the prerequisites for the creation of a separate pathophysiology department (at that time, general pathology) at the Imperial Moscow University (IMU) in the second half of the 18th century. The connection between the work of the first Russian professor of the medical faculty, S.G. Zybelin, and the initial elements of pathophysiology as a science and teaching subject at the IMU are elucidated. A review is provided of the preconditions for the creation, in 1804, of the Department of Pathology, Therapy and Clinical Practice at the IMU, in which medical students mastered human pathology within clinical discipline courses; arguments are given for the need to direct research of the processes underlying the emergence and development of human diseases, including animal studies. The authors provide historical information on the creation of the Department of Physiology and General Pathology, which was headed by the authoritative physiologist and experimenter Professor A.M. Filomafitsky, who used data from experimental and comparative physiology to explain possible causes, mechanisms of development and the essence of a number of forms of human pathology. The development stages of the independent department of pathological physiology are characterized in accordance with the activities of the first two heads of the department in its various periods. During the department’s management by Professor A.I. Polunin (1849–1880), the structure of the subject was formed: a general doctrine of disease and the theory of typical pathological processes. The curriculum and a number of works on individual forms of human pathology were also published. Following this period, a new clinical and experimental direction for the department, which has been retained to the present, was created by Professor A.B. Fokht (1880–1911).

Keywords: history of medicine, pathophysiology, scientific schools, department of pathophysiology, Sechenov University

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