Ivan Molleson

MOLLESON, Ivan Ivanovich (1842–1920), an eminent public health physician, one of the founders, organizers, and ideologists of Zemsky medicine and social hygiene, and the first sanitary physician in Russia. Upon graduating from Kazan University in 1865, he began working in the Zemsky administration, first in Yaransk Uyezd, Vyatka Governorate, then in Perm, in Shadrinsk and Irbit uyezds of Perm Governorate, and headed the sanitary bureaus of the Saratov (188*-1886), Tambov (1896–1906), and Kaluga (1906–1911) provincial Zemsky administrations. From 1911 Molleson retired from service and moved to Voronezh. Molleson was the organizer of collegial bodies of public medicine (sanitary councils) that became widespread in Russia.

Molleson was the initiator of establishing rural day nurseries and shelters in our country and worked to combat the Vetluga plague. He was the founder of our periodical sanitary press in the mid-1880s, founding the Perm Epidemiological Bulletin (Perm, 1886) and a number of Zemsky periodical sanitary reviews—Saratov, Kaluga, and others. Molleson was one of the founders of sanitary statistics in our country; the registration and medical reporting forms developed by him were implemented in a number of governorates. Among the prominent organizers and leaders of the Pirogov Congresses of Physicians, we invariably encounter Molleson's name. Molleson's activity as a physician had a clearly expressed social character: he took an active part in establishing libraries, public readings, consumer cooperatives, mutual credit societies, canteens, tea houses, and so on. Special note should be made of Molleson's outstanding work during years of famine and crop failures. "Molleson is Zemsky medicine, its program, its ideals, its aspirations and enthusiasms, and of course its griefs and hardships" (S. N. Igumnov). Molleson was not alien to all the socio-political errors that were characteristic of the ideologists of Zemsky medicine. The breadth of Molleson's outlook is characterized by the diversity of subjects to which his scientific and literary activity was devoted. Molleson wrote on issues of the budget, the history of Zemsky medicine, the construction of a network of medical institutions, the organization of obstetric care, the fight against eye diseases, public charity, epidemiology and syphilis, sanitary statistics, demography, school hygiene, anthropometry, industrial sanitation, migrant labor, agricultural workers, night lodging houses and public soup kitchens, the disposal of urban waste, courses for feldshers, and other issues. For a list of Molleson's works, see the bibliographical indexes of D. Zhbankov (see Medical Bibliography, Great Medical Encyclopedia, vol. III, p. 331).