Astrakhan

ASTRAKHAN, Ivan Dmitrievich (1862-1918), a prominent physician and social activist. In the 1890s, he engaged in practical medicine, and from the early 1900s until his death, he worked as a factory doctor in the textile factories of the Hamovniki district in Moscow. In 1903, he was one of the organizers and founders of the Society of Factory Physicians and played a leading role in it (as secretary and vice chairman). He actively participated in organizing all-Russian congresses of factory physicians (in 1909 and 1911) and edited the proceedings of the II Congress. In addition, he actively participated in the work of the Pirogov Society, the Society for the Fight Against Child Mortality, the Society of People's Universities, and others. He published a number of articles and made reports on issues of organizing medical aid for workers, health insurance, combating injuries, etc. Furthermore, he published a very serious work: 'Injuries and examination of workers of a calico-printing factory over 10 years,' for which he received a medal at the All-Russian Hygiene Exhibition in 1913. Although not a consistent socialist and not clearly linking the ultimate ideals of factory medicine with the struggle of the working class, A. was nevertheless a deeply public figure with a pronounced social-hygienic orientation. In his report 'The Tasks of the Factory Physician' at the II Congress of Factory Physicians, he strongly emphasized the need for preventive activities in the field of factory medicine, the importance of sanitary protection of labor, outlined the need to organize special physicians for sanitary-industrial supervision, emphasized the social role of the factory physician, particularly in terms of sanitary education, spoke in favor of the election of factory physicians. Astrakhan's worldview as a public physician is vividly characterized by his phrase that factory physicians, as public physicians, deal with 'patients whom the sad social order, heavy labor, and sometimes impossible living conditions lead to disease.'