The history of the appointment of V.M. Bekhterev to the Imperial Kazan University

Abstract

In this article, based on archival data and literary sources, the history and reasons for the appointment of V.M. Bekhterev to the Imperial Kazan University are described. Since the sixties of the 19th century, anatomy and physiology professors, as well as clinicians and psychologists of Kazan University, started comprehensive studies of the nervous system within the framework of a specially created psychophysiological department of the Society of Naturalists. Kazan scientific community was familiar with the experimental work of V.M. Bekhterev, the assistant of the Imperial Military Medical Academy, and considered him capable of continuing research on nervous system, which was actively carried out in Kazan. The professors of the medical faculty needed a like-minded person like V.M. Bekhterev at the university to support their scientific views on the role of the nervous system physiology in human mental phenomena formation, as well as to continue the nervous system complex studies, which were started in the framework of the psychophysiological department of the Society of Naturalists. The initiator of the invitation of V.M. Bekhterev as a physiology professor was N.O. Kovalevskiy, who was actively studying the nervous system physiology and supporting the young professor in his scientific and organizational activities for almost the entire period of his work in Kazan. Vladimir Mikhailovich was unanimously elected by the Council of the Faculty of Medicine, and despite being sent on a business trip abroad, he became a head of the Department of Psychiatry at Kazan University from August 1, 1885.