Alexander Ivanovich Yarotsky

YAROTSKY Alexander Ivanovich (born 1866), a prominent therapist. In 1889, he graduated from the Military Medical Academy and began his medical practice in the Zemstvo. From 1894, he worked in St. Petersburg at the Obukhov City Hospital under the guidance of V. M. Kernig, and later at the Petropavlovsk City Hospital. From 1899 to 1901, he was an assistant at the clinic of the Women's Medical Institute (Professor A. M. Levin). Simultaneously with his scientific work, Yarotsky engaged (1899–1901) in literary and journalistic work for Marxist journals ("Novoye Slovo," "Nachalo," "Severny Kurier"), and was a member of the "Union of Writers" and the "Free Economic Society." For his participation in the demonstration on March 2, 1901, at Kazan Square and for signing a protest by the "Union of Writers," Yarotsky was exiled from the capital. In 1901–1902, he worked with I. I. Metchnikoff in Paris. In 1903, he became a privat-docent, and from 1904 to 1918, a professor of the hospital and later the faculty therapeutic clinic of Yuryev University. From 1919 to 1924, he was a professor at Crimean University. From 1924, he was a supernumerary professor at the 1st Moscow State University. At the present time, he is a professor (head of department) at the Moscow Regional Clinical Institute (MOKI). In his dissertation "On the Change in the Size and Structure of Pancreatic Cells During Certain Types of Starvation" (St. Petersburg, 1898; Virch. Arch., Vol. CLVI, 1898), Yarotsky was the first to establish that the islets of Langerhans are independent organs of internal secretion embedded in the thickness of the pancreas. The "Yarotsky diet" for gastric and duodenal ulcers gained the greatest fame. To Yarotsky belong: a leading role in the construction of the Yarotsky-Levin oscillographic device, and the proposal for surgical intervention in mitral stenosis. In 1931, Yarotsky proposed a new method for treating diphtheria with antitoxic serum (Vrach. Gaz., 1931, No. 21; Schweiz. med. Wochenschr., 1931, No. 28). Yarotsky also developed issues of psychotherapy as applied to internal diseases. In this direction, he published a number of articles and the book "Idealism as a Physiological Factor" (Yuryev, 1908; German ed.: Idealismus als lebenshaltendes Prinzip, Wiesbaden, 1908). In this book, "idealism" is understood not in the philosophical sense of the term, but in the psychological one: the enrichment of mental life, the complication and exercise of higher conditioned reflexes create increased resistance of the organism to pathogenic factors. Yarotsky has published about 100 scientific works.