About

Soviet Medical Encyclopedia is an English translation of the Bolshaya Meditsinskaya Entsiklopediya, 1st ed. (Moscow, 1928–1936), ed. N. A. Semashko — the first large Soviet medical encyclopedia, published in 35 volumes under the editorship of Nikolai Semashko, the first People's Commissar of Health of the RSFSR.

The encyclopedia records how medicine, hygiene, physiology and public health were understood and practised in the late 1920s and early 1930s, written by the leading Soviet physicians and scientists of the time. To our knowledge this is its first translation into English.

This is a historical document

Articles are translated faithfully, without modernising the science. Many treatments, theories and statistics in them are outdated, and some views of the period are now rejected. Nothing on this site is medical advice. Where a modern term differs, we note it next to the article.

How the site was made

See translation methodology and editorial policy.