Arkady Rubel

RUBEL, Arkady Nikolayevich (born 1867), prominent therapist and specialist in lung diseases, particularly in tuberculosis, a student of Volkov and Podvysotsky. Graduated from the Military Medical Academy (in 1891). In 1909, he published his dissertation "On the Action of Bier's Stagnant Hyperemia on the Local Tuberculous Process" (St. Petersburg, 1909). From 1911, Rubel was a Privatdozent at the therapeutic clinic of the Women's Medical Institute, and from 1920... He was an opponent of localized organoplastic and narrowly morphological trends in clinical thinking and a supporter of the integrative physiological approach in the study and treatment of the patient. Rubel is the author of modern generally accepted views on kumys treatment, the author of the theory of "functional rest" of the lungs and "respiratory compensation" (1906), which provided a theoretical justification for previous empirical methods of treating tuberculosis in sanatoriums and at home, and a supporter of treatment in special types of "labor colonies." He was the first in Russia to use artificial pneumothorax (1910) and wrote the first monograph about it. Long before Assmann and Redeker, Rubel proved (in 1922 at the 1st All-Union Tuberculosis Congress) that pulmonary tuberculosis in adults always begins in the form of an acute or subacute (evolutive) disease and gave its clinical picture ("Initial Forms of Pulmonary Tuberculosis," 2nd ed., Leningrad, 1927). A summary of Rubel's views on tuberculosis is given in the chapter "Tuberculosis" in "Private Pathology and Therapy of Internal Diseases" edited by G. Lang and D. Pletnev (vol. I, issue 2, Moscow-Leningrad, 1931). Rubel proposed new concepts of the teachings on bronchitis, pneumonias (anaphylactic theory of croupous pneumonia), pneumosclerosis, and the pathogenesis of pulmonary emphysema. Rubel was the organizer (in 1899) and until 1906 the secretary of the "Society of Hospital Doctors in St. Petersburg," which united the majority of opposition-minded doctors of the city; he was the initiator of the creation of special commissions to combat tuberculosis, the embryos of the future "All-Russian League to Fight Tuberculosis." In 1905, he was one of the organizers and secretary of the "Union of Doctors" and a participant in the work of the "Union of Unions." On the night of January 9, 1905, Rubel organized a network of underground medical first-aid stations. In 1915, he created the first sanatorium-resort commission under the Regional Union of Towns, worked in the "All-Russian League to Fight Tuberculosis"; in 1918, he organized the first Central Station for Pulmonary Patients in Petrograd (subsequently the Central Dispensary).