Bloch

BLOCH, Bruno (Bruno Bloch), prominent Swiss dermatosyphilidologist, director of the university clinic in Zurich (born in 1878). Thanks to numerous and extremely valuable research works, he enjoys worldwide fame. His main works include: biochemistry and metabolism, experimental study of cancer, the connection of skin diseases with allergy and immunobiology, the problem of pigment formation in morphological and biochemical terms, skin tuberculosis, dermatomycoses (pathogenesis and immunobiology), trichophytids, the pathogenesis of eczema, and others.

BLOCH, Iwan (Iwan Bloch, 1872-1922), famous German sexologist. Having begun his research work with the study of the history of syphilis, Bloch in 1901 published his first major work, in which, as a result of thorough research, he concluded that syphilis was brought from the islands of Haiti to Spain in 1493 by Columbus's sailors. Later, Bloch devoted himself primarily to research on the sexual life of various peoples, starting with the ancients. In 1902, his work "Beitrage zur Aethiologie der Psychopathia sexualis" appeared, in which, in contrast to the school led by Krafft-Ebing, which viewed sexual deviations exclusively from a sexual-pathological point of view, Bloch put forward the anthropological-ethnological method of studying sexual phenomena. In 1906, Bloch published his famous work "Sexualleben unserer Zeit" ("The Sexual Life of Our Time"), which was translated into several languages (including Russian). With this work, Bloch laid the foundation for a new science—sexology (Sexualwissenschaft), the very name and essence of which were first formulated by him. Bloch's most comprehensive research work is "Prostitution" ("Die Prostitution"), which represents the first major study on the history of prostitution (the first volume of "Prostitution" was published in 1912 and translated into Russian). The remaining posthumous volumes are currently being published by Bloch's pupil Georg Löwenstein. In 1913, Bloch was one of the organizers of the world's first medical sexological society. Bloch also authored works in the field of scientific and practical medicine: on the action of iodine, thyreoidin, and thiradep on metabolism, on the treatment of syphilis with arsenic (even before the discovery of the spirochete), and others.