Medical Board

MEDICAL BOARD (Vrachebnaya Uprava), managed medical affairs in provinces and regions, while the main administration was concentrated in the departments of medical and state medical supplies and in the Medical Council under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Medical Boards were established on January 19, 1797. Each of them consisted of an inspector, an operator, and an obstetrician, and in the Siberian provinces and the Caucasus region, in addition, a veterinarian. In "important cases," for consultations and for the approval of any proposal, the Medical Board had the right to invite two district doctors, one of whom, residing in the provincial city, in the event of the absence or prolonged illness of one of the members of the Medical Board, temporarily performed his duties. Subordinate to the Medical Board were "city and district doctors, medical apprentices, senior and junior midwives, and all persons engaged in private medical practice in the province." The Medical Board, according to the regulation concerning it, was required to "seek all possible ways to know the merits, diligence, and skill of the medical employees subordinate to it and, in the service records sent annually to the Medical Department, to testify with complete fairness about each one separately, as to what each deserves." No one from the medical staff of the province had the right to communicate with "higher authorities" bypassing the Medical Board, which was also supposed to "resolve all kinds of quarrels, disagreements, and oppressions inflicted upon medical officials by other authorities and private individuals." The Medical Boards had supervision over pharmacies and shops selling pharmaceutical goods. Members of the Medical Board inspected them "in turn and unexpectedly." Through its inspector, the Medical Board had supervision "over hospital institutions of the civil department" in the province. "The main duty of the Medical Board," the regulation concerning it states, "besides the assistance which its members are obliged to provide to the suffering, each according to his rank, consists in taking care, by means of taught rules and regulations, generally of the observance of public health in the province where the board is located, and taking measures to prevent and stop cattle plagues." The Medical Board was obliged to compile physical and topographical descriptions of the entire "province with a detailed explanation of what most pertains to the medical part," had supervision "over food supplies and cleanliness," over epidemic diseases, "over treatment according to the homeopathic system," performed examinations of the insane, the maimed, civil officials, their wives and children, wounds of military officials petitioning for aid or a pension, students of theological schools being sent to the Medico-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg, and exiles; it resolved doubts of doctors regarding the recruitment of conscripts and performed forensic medical examinations in judicial cases. "The main supervision over the order and flow of affairs in the board belonged to its inspector." Medical Boards received instructions not only from the aforementioned departments and the Medical Council under the Ministry of Internal Affairs but also from governors; from provincial boards and chambers, the Medical Boards received decrees. The Medical Boards were abolished in 1862, when, having been merged into one with provincial committees of public health and smallpox committees, they were replaced by medical departments under provincial administrations.