Georgiy Reyn

REYN, GEORGIY Yermolayevich (born 1854) is an outstanding Russian gynecologist and a reactionary figure of the old tsarist medicine. He received his medical education at the Medico-Surgical Academy, from which he graduated in 1874. In 1876, he defended his dissertation "On the Question of Removing Uterine Fibromyomas via Laparotomy" (St. Petersburg, 1876). In 1880, he was elected privat-docent of the Medico-Surgical Academy. In 1883, he received the chair of obstetrics and women's diseases at Kiev University, which he held for 17 years; here, Reyn built a new model clinic and widely expanded operative activity on

the new foundations of antisepsis and asepsis. In Kiev, Reyn founded the Obstetrical-Gynecological Society. In 1900, Reyn was elected to the chair of obstetrics and women's diseases at the Military Medical Academy. Here he also built a new model clinic, managed it for 10 years, and developed intensive scientific and teaching activity. Besides purely academic work, Reyn devoted considerable effort to the social problems of his specialty at that time, in particular the issue of organizing obstetric care in Russia ("Obstetric Care in Russia," collection of reports at the IX Pirogov Congress, St. Petersburg, 1906). Belonging to the Octobrist faction in the State Duma, Reyn was appointed chairman of the Medical Council at the end of 1908. In this post, he attempted to reorganize healthcare in Russia, but unsuccessfully. This idea, reactionary in its basis under the conditions of the tsarist regime, sought to centralize all healthcare in one separate bureaucratic "Main Administration" (Ministry of Health). This idea met with a sharply negative attitude from representatives of zemstvo and public medicine. Despite the establishment of a special "Interdepartmental Commission for the Revision of Medical-Sanitary Legislation" (of which Reyn was appointed chairman), which developed a number of legislative provisions (including the "Regulation on the Establishment of the Main Administration of State Healthcare," approved under Article 87 of the "Fundamental Laws" without the sanction of the State Duma). This "Regulation" never came into effect. The idea of state healthcare was realized only after the October Revolution on completely different foundations and principles.—"Materials" on the work of the Interdepartmental Commission, collected in 6 volumes, are kept in the State Scientific Medical Library of the People's Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR in Moscow. Reyn belonged to the right-wing reactionary professoriate and, after the Revolution, emigrated abroad, where for a time he held a chair at Belgrade University.