Kravkov

Kravkov Nikolai Pavlovich (1865-1924), outstanding Russian pharmacologist. He completed the course of the natural sciences division of the physics-mathematics faculty of St. Petersburg University, and then continued his education at the Military Medical Academy, where he was retained in 1892 for scientific improvement. K. began his scientific work while still a student under the guidance of Sechenov, and then at the Military Medical Academy in the laboratory of general pathology Pashutin, under whom he remained as an assistant. The most significant works of K. during this period were research on amyloid, about which K. wrote his dissertation. During a trip abroad, K. worked under the guidance of Salkovsky and Pflüger. In 1898, K. was approved as a privat-docent at the department of general pathology, and a year later (1899) was elected by competition professor at the department of pharmacology of the Military Medical Academy, which he held until his death. K. was a brilliant lecturer and had an exceptional gift as a leader-teacher. Devoting himself entirely to scientific work, K. knew how to attract numerous collaborators to his laboratory, from which more than 140 works of an experimental nature were carried out under the guidance and with the direct participation of K. himself. The greatest fame was achieved by the works of K. and his students, carried out on isolated organs. In this field, K. developed several original methods for studying vessels on the isolated rabbit ear, on the heart arrested in systole. These and other research methods gained universal recognition and are widely used at present in our country and abroad. Using isolated organs as an object of action of poisons, Kravkov studied mainly questions of general pharmacology. He was the first to pose in all breadth the problem of the dependence of the nature of the effect on the different phases of action of the poison, and he was the first to establish the concepts of the so-called stages of entry and exit of the poison. Sensitive to the demands of clinical practice, K. carried out a series of experimental works extremely valuable for practical medicine: these include the intravenous hedonal anesthesia proposed by him, research on water pepper and yohimbine. Never limiting his work exclusively to pharmacological questions, K. also managed to use the methods he proposed to resolve questions of physiology and pathology. A number of works by K. and his collaborators are devoted to the study of functional changes in blood vessels during inflammation and in certain other pathological conditions; special interest was aroused by the research carried out on normal and pathologically altered human organs. In the last years of his life, K. managed to extend his beloved method of isolated organs to another field: he proposed to study the activity of surviving endocrine glands, thereby creating a new path for endocrinology. The study of the duration of survival of isolated organs, methods of their 'preservation' became those general biological problems that particularly strongly attracted the attention of K. Questions purely biological also include the question of the limits of sensitivity of living protoplasm, about the action of so-called minimal doses, etc. K. authored the classic manual 'Fundamentals of Pharmacology' (1st edition, vols. 1-2, SPB, 1904); the last, revised, 9th edition was published after K.'s death (stereotyped editions are repeated almost annually; the last one appeared in 1930). The principal works of K. besides the named manual: 'On amyloid, experimentally induced in animals' (dissertation, SPB, 1894); 'On the action of the alkaloid Johimbin on the animal organism' (Vrach, 1901, no. 12); 'On intravenous-hedonal anesthesia' (Russkii vrach, 1910, no. 12); 'On the different phases of action of poisons on the isolated heart' (ibid., 1911, no. 41); 'On the application of water pepper in internal hemorrhages' (ibid., 1912, no. 7); 'On the action of poisons on the gill vessels of fish' (ibid., 1913, no. 13); 'On the action of poisons on different periods of their stay in tissues' (ibid., 1915, no. 45); 'On the independent contraction of blood vessels' (ibid., 1916, no. 24); 'On functional changes in the vascular system of animals and man in various pathological conditions' (Vracheskoe delo, 1922, nos. 24-26; also in Zeitschr. f. d. ges. exp. Med., Vol. XXXV, 1923); 'Uber die Grenzen der Empfindlichkeit des lebenden Protoplasma' (Zeitschrift für die gesamte experimentelle Medizin, Vol. XXXIV, 1922).