Ludwig Iosifovich Sverzhevsky

SVERZHEVSKY, Ludwig Iosifovich (born 1867), director of the Otorhinolaryngology Clinic of the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute. He graduated from the Medical Faculty of Moscow University in 1893. As a resident at the Moscow Propaedeutic Clinic (1894), he wrote an experimental work, "Morphological Changes in the Blood in Bronchial Asthma" (Meditsinskoye Obozreniye, 1894, No. 14). At that time, this work was one of the first in Russia on hematology; later, during his assistantship at the Warsaw Hospital Therapeutic Clinic, he defended his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, "On the Influence of Toxins and Antitoxins on Nitrogen and Gas Metabolism in Animals" (1900). He then served as a Zemstvo physician in Voronezh Governorate and as an outpatient physician for the Moscow City Administration. After that, Sverzhevsky spent several years studying otorhinolaryngology in the best foreign clinics.

In 1903, he received the title of Privatdozent for diseases of the ear, throat, and nose at Moscow University. In 1911, he was elected professor of the Moscow Higher Women's Courses; from 1917, he headed the Department of Otorhinolaryngology at the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute. Sverzhevsky is one of the outstanding Soviet otorhinolaryngologists of modern times. In the works of Sverzhevsky himself, as well as those conducted under his leadership, questions regarding the interrelationships between diseases of the ear, throat, and nose and internal, infectious, and other diseases are widely covered. In his clinic, the rhinological method of treating diseases of the lacrimal passages was developed for the first time in Russia. Also, in his clinic, the concept of otoneurology was born for the first time in the Union, which advanced otorhinolaryngology to the highest stage of its development in the direction of otorhinoneurosurgery. As a result, he created a school that gave the country a significant number of prominent specialists. A whole series of works is devoted to peacetime and wartime trauma in the area of the ear, throat, and nose, the anatomy and clinical aspects of the paranasal sinuses, malignant neoplasms of the nose and nasopharynx, the treatment of laryngeal stenosis, and occupational diseases of the upper respiratory tract and ear. Among his recent works, the application of surgical diathermy in otorhinolaryngology deserves attention. In total, he has written 38 works.