Medical Charter

MEDICAL CHARTER, printed (for the first time in 1857, for the second in 1892, and for the third in 1905) in Volume XIII of the Code of Laws, consists of three parts, or "books." The first of these deals with medical institutions, provincial medical establishments, provincial medical inspectors, and provincial veterinary administrations (Chapter I); medical administration in districts and cities (Chapter II); medical administration in certain provinces and regions (St. Petersburg and Moscow with their provinces, Odessa, the provinces of the Kingdom of Poland, Siberia, and Transcaucasia) in particular (Chapter III); the administration of rural medical units (Chapter IV); private practitioners (Chapter V); midwives (Chapter VI); the maintenance provided to various persons of the medical and veterinary departments, and private fees for treating patients (Chapter VII); hospital establishments, the administration of mineral waters, pharmacies and factories, laboratories, and special departments of chemical plants for the production and wholesale sale of complex pharmaceutical preparations; the court medical department; the organization of the medical department in areas subordinate to the Ministry of War in terms of administration; and feldsher and dental schools. "Book Two" contains the "Medical Police Charter"; it deals with general measures for the preservation of public health, the preservation of air purity, the preservation of the harmlessness of food supplies, the sale of poisonous and potent substances, the burial of the dead, protection against epidemic diseases in general, vaccination, the fight against epidemics, the protection of coasts and ports that lack quarantine institutions from plague contagion, and veterinary-police measures for the prevention and cessation of contagious and epidemic diseases in animals and for the neutralization of raw animal products, etc. "Book Three" contains the "Forensic Medicine Charter" with an indication of the rules for the "forensic examination of dead bodies in general." This Charter does not clearly delineate the duties of government bodies and city and zemstvo institutions in medical-sanitary affairs and concentrates sanitary supervision in the hands of the police, who presented certain demands to the population and imposed specific penalties for their violation. The Medical Charter was based on the 1797 instruction to the medical boards established at that time. It goes without saying that the "charter" was obsolete from the very moment of its appearance, and it is not surprising that in medical literature and at medical congresses, persistent wishes for the speedy revision of the Medical Charter were constantly expressed. And the government itself perfectly understood the entire unsuitability of the existing medical legislation, but did not succeed in the matter of its revision. Thus, as early as 1861, in view of the complete discrepancy between the Medical Charter's instructions regarding the fight against contagious diseases and the requirements of the science of that time, the Ministry of Internal Affairs was ordered to develop a general instruction on this issue. The instruction was not compiled.

Likewise, in 1882, the Medical Department printed a draft of a sanitary charter, which remained only a draft. In 1902, a circular of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was published regarding the reorganization of the medical-sanitary department, indicating the main provisions of the proposed reform, which, however, was not carried out. Finally, in 1912, an interdepartmental commission was formed under the Ministry of Internal Affairs to revise medical-sanitary legislation, but it also did not create a new Medical Charter.