BERESTNEV

BERESTNEV, Nikolai Mikhailovich, bacteriologist (1867-1910). Graduated from Moscow University in 1891. From 1895, he worked at the Gabrichevsky Bacteriological Institute (of Moscow University) as a senior assistant to Gabrichevsky. In 1904, he took the position of head of the plague "Fort Alexander I" near Kronstadt. In 1908, he returned to Moscow, to the institute, and after Gabrichevsky's death, became director of this institute (until his own death). B. was also from its founding secretary, and from 1908 chairman of the bacteriology department of the Society of Natural Science Lovers. For more than a year, B. traveled in India studying plague, and participated in a number of trips across Russia for the study and fight against plague and malaria. He was one of the first to carry out quinine treatment of the population and extermination of mosquito larvae in the Voronezh province. B. authored about 25 scientific works, the main of which are his works on actinomycosis, plague, and malaria. In his work "Actinomycosis and its causative agents," he classified actinomycosis fungi, gave valuable epidemiological indications, and described a new species of actinomycosis fungus that spreads diffusely in the infected organism without forming colonies. In his works on plague, he exhaustively described the morphology of the plague bacillus and its involutionary forms. In his works on malaria, he described the development history of the malaria parasite in the mosquito body, proposed a new method of staining the parasite (a modification of the Romanovsky method), and gave a complete description of the morphology of malaria parasites. B. was an outstanding teacher. From his school came a number of students: Padlevsky, Charnotsky, Shingareva, Shukevich, Shurupov, Shreiber, Finkelstein, Kharazov, and others. B. died young from accidental infection.