Shcherbak

SHCHERBAK Alexander Yefimovich (1863-1934), outstanding neuropathologist and physiotherapist. He received his medical education at the Military Medical Academy, which he graduated from in 1887. Even as a fourth-year student, he wrote a scientific work for which he received a gold medal and the Botkin Prize. After graduating from the academy, Shcherbak was retained for advanced training at the clinic of nervous and mental diseases of Professor Merezhovsky, where he defended his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Medicine and was sent abroad. There Shcherbak stayed from 1891 to 1894, working with Dubois-Reymond, Flechsig, Wundt, Strauss, François, Frank, and at the Salpêtrière with Charcot. In 1894, Shcherbak was simultaneously elected privat-docent at the Military Medical Academy and professor at Warsaw University in the department of nervous diseases. Due to his active participation in socio-political life and in connection with the reaction that occurred in Russia after the revolutionary events of 1905, Shcherbak, along with the progressive part of the faculty, was forced to leave the university and go abroad. In 1911, Shcherbak, due to his health, settled in Sevastopol, where from 1914 he became head of the newly built Institute of Physical Methods of Treatment (now the State Central Research Institute of Physical Methods of Treatment named after Sechenov), directing it for 20 years, until the day of his death. At the institute, Shcherbak created his original physiotherapy school, with the help of which he developed a number of new physiotherapy methods, such as cervical diathermy, collar and belt methods, methods of ionic and regional reflexes, new methods for studying the endocrine and autonomic nervous systems, etc. The electrical iodine-ion test proposed by Shcherbak found wide application in the methodology of experimental research. To the pen of Shcherbak belong over 150 printed scientific works, of which particular attention deserves: a collection of clinical lectures read at Warsaw University, a work on the action of sodium bromide, chloral hydrate and morphine on cerebral circulation, a dissertation on phosphorus metabolism in connection with brain activity, pathogenesis and treatment of progressive muscular dystrophies, physiotherapy of chronic arthritis, a monograph on migraine, etc. Of great importance are the works of Shcherbak in the field of physiotherapy. Shcherbak edited periodical publications, and also served as one of the co-editors of the Great Medical Encyclopedia. For outstanding scientific merits, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his work, Shcherbak was awarded the title of Honored Scientist.