DOI: 10.17720/2409-5834.v3.2.2016.16m

M. A. Morokhovets

This article is about the life of the doctor of medicine and assistant professor T.I. Vyazemsky, whose activities were associated with the medical faculty of Imperial Moscow University for many years. Utterly devoted to science, Vyazemsky – a scholar, public figure, bibliophile and historian of medicine – was one of the first Russian researchers of the influence of weak electric currents on animals and plants. He was one of the founders and editors of the balneological newspaper Mineral Waters, which was published in Pyatigorsk. He was also one of the founders of the Club of Activists Against School Alcoholism and the anti-alcohol museum in Moscow. He was one of the editors of the magazine In the Struggle for Sobriety. Vyazemsky created an extensive bibliography of scientific publications on the effects of alcohol on the human body, including 1,153 works, gave public lectures about the dangers of alcoholism and suggested several legislative measures to combat it. He was the author of several works on the history of science and education in Russia (on the use of Caucasian mineral waters in balneology, the history of Moscow university and the Faculty of Medicine, the history of teaching of physiology at Moscow university, and biographies of many Moscow university professors). Vyazemsky collected a unique scientific library of about 40,000 volumes, containing foreign-language publications that are absent from the majority of Russian libraries. The result of the joint work of Vyazemsky with Imperial Moscow University Professor L.Z. Morokhovets was the construction of a scientific station in Crimea, at the foot of Karadag mountain. In 1914, the Karadag scientific station was appropriated but in 2015, after a long hiatus, the name of its creator and first head – T.I. Vyazemsky – was returned. The article presents excerpts from previously unused archival materials, clarifying important events from Vyazemsky’s biography.

Keywords: T.I. Vyazemsky, neurology, balneology, toxicology, the fi ght against alcoholism, history of medicine, bibliophily