Aleksandr Petrov

PETROV, ALEKSANDR Vasilyevich (1837–1885), professor of pathological anatomy at Kazan University, a pioneer of public medicine in Russia. After graduating from the university in 1859 and working for two years as a physician in the Olyokminsky and Vilyuysky districts of the Yakut province, he was retained at Kazan University. After a trip abroad, where he worked under Virchow and other prominent German scientists, he was elected in 1865 as professor of pathological anatomy at Kazan University. His dissertation, "On the Doctrine of Uremia," was simultaneously published in Virchow's Archive.

At the university, Petrov worked actively on implementing the new university charter, in particular on revising the curricula necessary, in his opinion, for training a new type of rural district physician. Petrov was the first to raise the question of strengthening the sanitary training of physicians and facilitated the reform of hygiene instruction, insisting on the introduction of a course in medical geography and statistics, which, on his recommendation, was taught by Peskov, his student and associate. Petrov, a student and adherent of Chernyshevsky, fully aligned himself with the Narodnik worldview and, in accordance with it, outlined the paths for the development of public medicine in Russia (the very term "public medicine" belongs to Petrov).

In this regard, Petrov is essentially the ideologue and theorist of Zemstvo medicine, its sanitary direction, and the head of the radical-democratic wing of Zemstvo physicians. Under the direct guidance and influence of Petrov, the first sanitary physicians began to work: Molesson, Peskov, Osipov, and a whole series of his other students, such as Tezyakov and others. Of particular interest is Petrov's activity as chairman of the Kazan Society of Physicians from 1870. Instead of casual meetings of the society with casuistic reports, Petrov put forward in his programmatic speech the planned task of systematically studying the Kazan region from a sanitary perspective, clarifying the conditions and nature of diseases among the working and peasant population, and developing measures for improving the health of the region. Several works were conducted by Petrov together with Shcherbakov; the conclusions of his reports spoke of the need to reorganize the medical system both in Kazan and in the province. Petrov also took steps to organize branches of the Kazan Society in Perm, Saratov, and Samara. He also developed the program for the "Journal of Public Medicine," for which he was designated as the responsible editor, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not permit the publication of this journal. A group of young, energetic public physicians organized around Petrov, but as this group moved from surveys and descriptions to persistent practical proposals, it encountered sharp opposition from the true masters of the situation—the deputies of the Duma and the Zemstvo board. In the Kazan Society of Physicians itself, Petrov's group of petty-bourgeois democrats did not find support among the rest of the mass of liberal and conservative physicians, who were directly or indirectly connected with the merchants and landowners of Kazan. The society was warned about the undesirability of its direction; it was transferred to the university, where a cohesive, reactionary group of professors weakened Petrov's supporters, some of whom had to leave the university, for example, Peskov. After this, Petrov worked with less activity than before, to which was added a fatal ailment—tuberculosis of the lungs—which early led him to the grave. Petrov's speeches and reports in the Kazan Society and at the university represent extremely important material for studying the Narodnik wing of Zemstvo medicine, as Petrov was a founder and leader who stood on the petty-bourgeois position of the "classless" intelligentsia, including the medical intelligentsia, with its "historical mission" of leading the people. Among Petrov's most important works are: "On the Direction and Tasks of the Kazan Society of Physicians" (Diary of the Kazan Society of Physicians, Kazan, 1873, 1874, 1880, 1881); "On Taking Measures to Protect the Health of the Urban Population in Kazan" (together with N. Sokolovsky, ibid., 1873); "On the Necessity of a New Organization of Urban Medicine in Kazan" (ibid., 1883).