Mikhnov

MIKHNOV Sergei Dmitrievich (1860-1924), a prominent professor of obstetrics and diseases of women; graduated from the natural sciences department of the physics and mathematics faculty and the Military Medical Academy (1886). While serving as an intern in the clinic of Professor A. I. Lebedev, he defended his dissertation "On the Diseases of the Fallopian Tubes and Ovaries from Pathological-Anatomical and Clinical Perspectives" (St. Petersburg, 1889); in the same year he received a foreign research assignment. In 1898 he received the title of privat-docent and until his appointment to the chair at the University of Tartu (1900), he worked as an assistant in the clinic of Professor N. N. Fenomenov at the former Women's Medical Institute. He held this chair until his death (until 1918 in Tartu and from 1918 in Voronezh after the evacuation of the University of Tartu there).-M. left about 40 scientific works, of which the greatest value is represented by the aforementioned dissertation, a series of works on eclampsia, works on the mechanism of childbirth, on operative gynecology, on uterine fibroids, on female beauty, on the border and distant areas of obstetrics and gynecology, and others. Mikhnov owned an original theory of the mechanism of childbirth, the doctrine of the "conducting axis of the birth canal", on the significance of the "general shape of the head" (on the "kidney-shaped form of the head"). Mikhnov's theory received confirmation in further research by his students (Onisimov), and therefore this doctrine should enter as a definite doctrine in obstetric textbooks. M. compiled "A Systematic Index of Russian Obstetric-Gynecological Literature from its Beginning to 1901" (Scientific Notes of the University of Tartu, 1908, Nos. 4-8 and 1909, Nos. 1-6; also a separate edition-Tartu, 1909). M. took an active part in public life, greatly contributed to improving the organization of teaching in both higher education and medical technical schools, and in general did much for women's education.