Minkh, Georgy Nikolayevich

MINKH, Georgy Nikolayevich (1836–1896). He graduated from the medical faculty of Moscow University in 1861, after which he worked in the therapeutic clinic of Professor Zakharyin and in foreign clinics and laboratories, mainly in the pathological anatomy institute of Virchow. In 1867, he was elected prosector of the hospital for manual laborers in Moscow; in 1872, prosector of the city hospital in Odessa; and in 1884, professor of the department of pathological anatomy at Kiev University, a position he held until his death. Minkh’s dissertation was "On the Development of False Membranes on Serous Surfaces" (Moscow, 1870). In total, Minkh left about 60 printed works. Among them, the work relating to leprosy ("Leprosy in the South of Russia," Vol. I–III, Kiev, 1884–94) is widely known. In his works on leprosy, which he studied for 17 years, Minkh held the view of the contagiousness of leprosy, in contrast to the then-prevalent view of its heredity. Minkh was the first to establish the identity of the intestinal form of anthrax with its cutaneous form (Proceedings of the 4th All-Russian Congress of Naturalists and Physicians, Kazan, 1873). In 1874, in Odessa, Minkh conducted an experiment on himself by infecting himself with the blood of a patient with relapsing fever, during which he became severely ill and nearly died (described by him in the "Moscow Medical Herald," 1874, No. 1). Based on his work, Minkh was the first to arrive at a correct understanding of the epidemiology of relapsing and typhus fevers, blaming blood-sucking insects for their spread. He set forth his views on this issue in an open letter to the editor of the Moscow "Medical Chronicle," S. I. Kostarev (Vol. III, No. 6, 1878), and later to the editorial board of "Vrach" (1892, No. 3). These correct views of Minkh, which were half a century ahead of the concepts prevailing at the time, were supported by almost no one. It should be noted that the well-known English epidemiologist Murchison (London) correctly evaluated Minkh’s views and at that time began to recommend the destruction of blood-sucking insects parasitizing humans to combat typhus and relapsing fevers. In addition, Minkh left several works on plague; in particular, he described the Vetlyanka epidemic of 1881. In this work, besides a brilliant analysis of the course of the epidemic, there are indications of what we now understand as tularemia. Finally, it should be noted that in his first work on the intestinal form of anthrax, Minkh described cells that engulf anthrax bacteria, thus establishing for the first time the phagocytosis of pathogenic bacteria (20 years before Mechnikov).