The origin of the Military Medical Academy (dedicated to the 350th anniversary of Peter the Great)

Abstract

In 2019, under the initiative of corresponding members of the Russian Academy of Sciences A.Ya. Fisun and V.O. Samoilov, in preparation for the celebration of the 350th anniversary of Peter the Great, a commission was established at the Military Medical Academy to determine the date of its founding and to establish the role of the emperor in this event. The reason for this decision was a debate about the age of the academy, which has endured for more than a century. The absence of a legislative act on the establishment of the academy prevents an uncontroversial decision from being made on this issue. The conditionality of the selection of Paul Is decree of December 18, 1798 on the construction of hospital buildings became acute when the Russian State Navy Archive discovered information about a similar decree of Catherine II of April 29, 1796 on the construction of the same buildings. The collection of identified and published documents accumulated over the past 20 years allows us to state with complete certainty that the hospital schools in Saint Petersburg have been in operation practically since the very founding of the city, having been created approximately simultaneously with the famous Moscow hospital school of Nicolaas Bidloo. In 1715 the Emperor Peter the Great completed the construction of Saint Petersburg hospital schools, teachers were allocated to available pupils, and the educational and material foundation was laid in the form of two base hospitals. The assistants and advocates for these ideas of Peter the Great were the archiaters R.K. Erskine and I.L. Blumentrost. The emperor did not live to witness the final work, and the construction of buildings was completed after his death; only during the reign of Anna Ioannovna was the staff (1733) approved by the archiatrist J.H. Rieger and the uniform procedure of preparation (1735) by archiatrist J.B. von Fischer. The activities of P.Z. Kondoidi in the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna brought teaching to a new level, provided an influx of teaching staff, and expanded the list of disciplines. Under Catherine II, the schools were merged into the Main Medical College. The completion of the transformation of schools into an academy in the reign of Paul I is associated with the name of Count A.I. Vasiliev, thanks to whom, on February 12, 1799, the oldest medical school in Russia became an academy.