Artemy Rafalovich and his Essays by Russian Doctor: Historical and ethnographic source

Abstract

The author considers the biography of Artemy Rafalovich and his Essays by a Russian doctor as a source for ethnography of the population of the Near East in the first half of the nineteenth century. Rafalovich had been sent by the Russian Ministry of Home Affairs to countries under the rule of Ottoman Empire in order to investigate reasons for the emergence and spread of the plague. His Essays by a Russian doctor who had been sent to the Orient were the main source for this essay, especially the second part of these Essays in which the climate, agriculture, urban centers, and populations of Syria, Palestine and Lebanon are described. The au-thor follows the life of Artemy Rafalovich and stresses that many facts are still not sufficiently researched. Further, the author analyses the Essays as a source for the study of the history of medicine, public hygiene in the region, and the reasons for infectious diseases described by Rafalovich. The author also emphasizes that Rafalovich became a member of Ethnographic Department of the Russian Imperial Geographical Society, and during his trips he described the population - ethnic and religious groups of the region - its numbers, activities, customs, and so on. Rafalovich was a baptized Jew, so he distanced himself from the different Jew-ish groups of the region; he describes their numbers and sometimes the hygiene of Jewish quarters. He was mainly interested in description of Jewish hospitals and pharmacies. The author concludes that Essays by Rafalovich were of great importance for medical research in his time, for example by highlighting the influence of climate, water, and food on the public health of the region. Moreover, his topographic descriptions - including clarifications of riverbeds, directions of mountain chains, and so forth - would have been of interest to the Russian intelligence service, and the activities of Artemy Rafalovich were highly regarded by the Russian government.