Avksenty Vasilyevich Korchak-Chepurkovsky

KORCHAK-CHEPURKOVSKY, Avksenty Vasilyevich (born in 1857), a prominent hygienist-epidemiologist, one of the pioneers of Zemstvo medical-sanitary development, professor of the Higher Medical School in Kiev, full member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (since 1921), head of the Department of Public Health and head of the Section of Hygiene and Epidemiology of the Research Department of Theoretical Medicine of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He received his higher education at Kiev University, where he entered the natural sciences division of the physics-mathematics faculty, but having been expelled from there for participation in the student movement ("March movement"), he re-entered Kharkov University (1878) in the medical faculty, from which he graduated in 1883. He began his practical medical career in 1883 in the Constantinograd Uyezd Zemstvo of Poltava Province, and subsequently worked as a sanitary physician for the Kherson and Bessarabian Zemstvos. In 1898, he defended his dissertation in Kiev, "Materials for the Study of Diphtheria Epidemics in Russia" (Kherson, 1898). All of Korchak-Chepurkovsky's subsequent activity took place in Kiev, where he successively served as: district sanitary physician, head of the sanitary department of the city administration, privat-docent of the medical faculty in the department of hygiene, and professor of hygiene and dean of the medical faculty of the State Ukrainian University, which was later transformed into the Kiev State Medical Institute. In his research dedicated to the epidemiology of diphtheria, Korchak-Chepurkovsky substantiates the law of periodicity of diphtheria epidemics and puts forward the idea of the existence of an antagonism between diphtheria epidemics and other childhood epidemics. In addition to his dissertation, Korchak-Chepurkovsky dedicated a work on the methodology of scientific research in the field of epidemiology to the suitability of vital statistics records of death for the purposes of studying epidemics. Along with research in the field of epidemiology, Korchak-Chepurkovsky produced a number of works dedicated to the development of issues related to the study of the general sanitary condition of the population of Russia. Such are his works on the population movement of Bessarabia Province as a basis for judging its sanitary condition; and on the change in mortality in the city of Kiev since the introduction of the sewage system there. A number of Korchak-Chepurkovsky's works are dedicated to questions of the history of medicine and sanitation in the territory of Ukraine and the question of the relations between provincial and uyezd Zemstvos in the matter of organizing Zemstvo medicine. Over the last years, Korchak-Chepurkovsky has been a member of the Kiev City Council, a member of the District Congresses of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies of the Kiev District, and a member of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee.