The baronet’s nephew Willie: materials from the collection of the library of the Military Medical Academy

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to introduce into scientific circulation little-known handwritten materials from the library of the Military Medical Academy, containing additions to the facts of the biography, personal characteristics and close circle of the President of the Medical-Surgical Academy, the life physician of the three emperors, Baronet Yakov Vasilyevich Willie. The article presents the historical details of the transfer of the personal archive of the Willie and Ruhl families to the library of the Military Medical Academy by a descendant of famous doctors, a talented artist Mikhail Yakovlevich Willie. Fragments of the correspondence of Willies nephew the full namesake and also the life physician Yakov Vasilyevich Willie Jr. (or 2nd) with Scottish relatives and friends are given, in which, in particular, the features of medical education in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century are revealed. Handwritten in English in an illegible handwriting, the letters of young Willie lay in the manuscript fund for almost 100 years before, thanks to the efforts of the bibliographer Galina Mikhailovna Roslik, they were attracted to the attention of specialists who could read and translate them. The article also describes the details of the career and personal fate of the Scottish doctor Ya.V. Willie II in the Russian service, under Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich. The topic of the unprecedented testament of Baronet Willie on the transfer of the entire inheritance for the construction of a civil hospital in memory of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich is touched upon.