DOI: 10.17720/2409-5834.v7.1.2021.01a
Kostiantyn K. Vasyliev1,
Yurii K. Vasyliev2
1Odessa National Medical University
2 Valikhovskiy Lane, Odessa 65082, Ukraine
2Sumy State University
2 Rymskogo-Korsakova St., 40007 Sumy, Ukraine
This article explains that, around the turn of the nineteenth century, Medical Police was taught not as a separate, independent discipline at higher medical schools in the Russian Empire, but as a branch of Forensic Medicine. The authors shed light on the role played by Johann Peter Frank in the establishment of Medical Police as a separate discipline at higher education institutions in the Russian Empire, in which he worked first at the Imperial University of Vilna (Vilnius) from 1804, and then in Saint Petersburg from 1805 to 1808. From 1805, at his suggestion, Medical Police was separated from the course in Forensic Medicine at Vilna, and taught as an independent discipline by Professor August Bécu. In 1805, Frank drew up the charter and staffing table for the Saint Petersburg Academy of Medicine and Surgery, which stated that Medical Police was to be taught as an independent discipline. The academy’s first lectures on Medical Police as an independent subject were given by Professor Sergei Gromov in 1808. Medical Police also emerged as an independent discipline at other higher education institutions in the empire: at the Imperial University of Dorpat (where it was first taught by Professor Martin von Styx) from 1803; at the Imperial University of Kharkov (under Professor Ivan Knigin) from 1811; at the Imperial University of Moscow (under Professor Yefrem Mukhin) from 1813; and at the Imperial University of Kazan (under Professor Johann Baptist Braun) from 1814.
Keywords: history of medicine, medical police, teaching at higher education institutions, higher schools in the Russian Empire, university charter, course in forensic medicine, independent discipline
