FREZE

FREZE Alexander Ustinovich (1827-1884), the first professor of psychiatry at Kazan University, builder and first director of the first psychiatric hospital in the province (Kazan Regional Hospital). Born in Revel. Graduated from the medical faculty of Moscow University in 1851; from December 1854 at the Moscow Military Hospital. In 1857 he received a foreign business trip and visited almost all psychiatric hospitals in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Holland, and England. In 1858 he defended his dissertation in Moscow "De paralysi generali, sive dementia paralytica" (M., 1858), which was the first serious work on progressive paralysis in Russia. In 1862 he published a book with plans "On the arrangement of houses for the insane"; as a result of this work, he was invited to establish the first regional psychiatric hospital in Kazan, which for a long time remained a good and only well-equipped psychiatric institution in the province; in this hospital F. for the first time in Russia attempted to implement elements of the "no-restraint" system. F.'s activity as an organizer of psychiatric hospitals was not limited to Kazan alone; in 1867 he traveled to Kiev and Odessa to organize hospitals there, in 1873 he participated in consultations on the establishment of the Simferopol psychiatric hospital and in 1874 the Perm one. Simultaneously with heading the hospital, F. was elected associate professor of the vacant psychiatry chair at Kazan University in 1866 and began teaching psychiatry. In 1872 F. was appointed ordinary professor of psychiatry. From 1879 F. was almost blind, but nevertheless continued his service. Among F.'s works, besides his dissertation, should be noted "Outline of Forensic Psychiatry" (Kazan), which went through 4 editions and first appeared in 1871.