Psychoneurology in the province: works and days of Mikhail Dobrokhotov at the edge of the centuries

Abstract

The article is devoted to the unexplored period of life of the famous Russian neurologist and psychiatrist of the first half of the 20th century Mikhail Sergeyevich Dobrokhotov (1878–1952). Based on the first time archived materials brought into scientific circulation from the funds of the State Archives of the Rostov Region, the Central State Archives of the Republic of Dagestan, the archive of the Dagestan State Medical University, the milestones of the life path of the privat-docent M.S. Dobrokhotov in the city of Rostov-on-Don, where he lived and worked during the Civil War. The authors consider the multifaceted activity of M.S. Dobrokhotov in the Don University. For the period of the Civil War, the most difficult years occur in the history of the medical faculty, at the department of psychoneurology of which the university professor M.S. Dobrokhotov. The authors focus on the functioning of the health care system of the Don region in the period under review. A separate place is given to the history of the department and the clinic of psycho-neurology of the University, since after the First World War the number of patients with psycho-neurological disorders increased sharply. In addition, on the basis of archival materials, the history of the Don Traumatology Institute is being reconstructed, the director of which was M.S. Dobrokhotov. It was in this institution that the combatants were provided with specialized medical care: the treatment of fractures, contractures, paralysis, neuroses, and lesions of the central and peripheral nervous system. The article reveals the history of the creation of the Rostov Society of Doctors-Psycho-Neurologists, whose members were famous Russian scientists A.I. Yushchenko, S.N. Davidenkov, K.S. Agadzhanyants, V.V. Brailovsky, N.M. Itsenko, N.M. Krol’ and others. A certain place is also given to M.S. Dobrokhotov in the post of head of the psychiatric section of the Don Regional Department of Health.