Dolzhenov

DOLZHENOV, Vasily Ivanovich (1842-1918), a prominent public figure occupying a place in the first rank of creators of Russian social medicine. Born into a small landowner family in Kursk Province; after graduating from Kharkov University (1865), he worked in foreign clinics where he specialized in eye diseases. Then he took a position at the Kursk hospital and focused on developing the fundamental issues of social medicine, becoming its organizer in the province (reports at medical congresses, in provincial assemblies, city dumas, in the medical society, articles in general and medical press, medical-statistical research). D. managed the provincial sanitary bureau, also worked on organizing public education. At the same time (from 1887) D. actively participated in the work of the Pirogov Society, at medical congresses, in commissions, in the society's journal; was the initiator of many of its undertakings. Was elected as a member of the 1st and II State Dumas. Was distinguished by extraordinary personal modesty. Numerous works by D. were published in the publications of Kursk Zemstvo and the Pirogov Society.