Ivan Molleson

MOLLESON, Ivan Ivanovich (1842–1920), an outstanding public health physician, one of the founders, organizers, and ideologists of zemstvo medicine and social hygiene, and the first sanitary physician in Russia. Upon graduating from Kazan University in 1865, he began working in the zemstvo, initially in Yaransk Uyezd of Vyatka Governorate, then in Perm, in Shadrinsk and Irbit uyezds of Perm Governorate, and managed the sanitary bureaus of the Saratov (1885–1886), Tambov (1896–1906), and Kaluga (1906–1911) provincial zemstvos. In 1911, Molleson retired from service and moved to Voronezh. Molleson was the organizer of collegiate organs of public medicine (sanitary councils) that became widespread in Russia. Molleson was the initiator of establishing rural day-nurseries and shelters in our country and worked on combating the Vetluga plague. Molleson was the founder of our periodical sanitary press in the mid-1880s. He founded the Perm Epidemiological Leaflet (Perm, 1886) and a number of zemstvo periodical sanitary reviews: Saratov, Kaluga, and others. Molleson was one of the founders of sanitary statistics in our country; the registration and medical reporting forms he developed were implemented in a number of gubernias. Among the most prominent organizers and leaders of the Pirogov Congresses of Physicians, we invariably encounter the name of Molleson. Molleson's activity as a physician had a clearly pronounced public character: he took an active part in establishing libraries, public readings, consumer cooperatives, loan and savings associations, canteens, tea-houses, etc. Special note should be made of Molleson's outstanding work during years of famine and crop failures. 'Molleson is zemstvo medicine, its program, its ideals, its aspirations and enthusiasms, and of course its griefs and hardships' (S. N. Igumnov). Molleson was not alien to all the socio-political errors that were characteristic of the ideologists of zemstvo medicine. The breadth of Molleson's outlook is characterized by the diversity of issues to which his scientific and literary activity was devoted. Molleson wrote on matters of budget, the history of zemstvo medicine, the construction of a network of medical institutions, the organization of obstetric care, the fight against eye diseases, public charity, epidemiology and syphilis, sanitary statistics, demography, school hygiene, anthropometry, industrial sanitation, migrant labor, agricultural workers, night shelters and public canteens, the removal of urban waste, courses for feldshers, and other issues. For a list of Molleson's works, see the bibliographical guides of D. Zhbankov (see Medical Bibliography, BSE, vol. III, p. 331).