Theme 6 Outstanding Foreign and Russian Doctors.
From ancient time people studied human body and tried to treat various diseases. To begin with, it is worth mentioning an ancient outstanding physician and scientist Hippocrates. He was born in Greece in 460 or 459 B.C. and is still surrounded by an aureole of glory. Galen regarded him as “the wonderful inventor of all that is beautiful”. Hippocrates freed medicine from superstition. He established the fact that disease was a natural process and its symptoms were the reactions of the body to the disease. The chief function of the physician was to aid the natural forces of the body. Although we know very little of Hippocrates himself we have in the Hippocratic Collection, or “Corpus Flippocraticum”, a complete exposition of his methods. He created medicine on the basis of experience.
Our country is proud of its prominent doctors: N.I.Pirogov, I.P.Pavlov,
S.P.Botkin, Bechterev, N.I.Burdenko. For centuries Russian medical science has accumulated knowledge in different brunches of medicine. The surgery is not an exception. The brightest representative of Russian surgery school is N.I.Pirogov. He was bom in Moscow on November, 25, 1810. In 1836 he became a professor of surgery. “There is no medicine without surgery and no surgery without anatomy” was his motto. The greatness of his work is in generalization of isolated ideas in surgery which he placed on a solid scientific basis. Pirogov created the “Topographic Anatomy” atlas which is still helping to train generations of surgeons. N.I.Pirogov was the first performed osteoplastic operation, operation on the intestines in cases of bullet wounds. The great surgeon was also the initiator of the extensive use of anesthesia during operations.
In the field of medicine and health protection, S.P. Botkin was an outstanding public figure. He was born on September 17, 1832. He graduated from the Medical faculty of the Moscow University in 1853. At the age of 28 he began working at the Medico-Surgical Academy in Petersburg. He worked during the epoch of the most rapid progress in natural science and physiology. 1 le made every effort to turn clinical medicine into an exact science. S.P. Botkin is known as an exceptional therapeutist and a brilliant diagnostician. He was the first to advance the idea of an infectious origin of hepatitis. The term “Botkin’s disease” was introduced into medicine in 1940. One of his greatest scientific achievements was the theory of nervism - the most progressive theory in clinical medicine.
An outstanding English physician Alexander Fleming was born in 1881.He performed his research work at one of the hospitals in London and became interested in bacterial action and antibacterial drugs. Accidentally he discovered a substance which was not toxic to the tissues and stopped the growth of the most common pathogenic bacteria. Fleming called it “penicillin”. He was in the middle of his career when World War I began. He served in the Royal Army Medical Coip. In 1942 Fleming tried his own experiment. His friend was very ill, dying. After several injections of penicillin the man was cured. It marked the beginning of penicillin treatment. Fleming received the Nobel Prize for his great discovery.