Vladimir Roth

ROTH, VLADIMIR Karlovich (1848–1916), a famous Russian neuropathologist and professor at Moscow University, Swedish by origin. He graduated from Moscow University in 1871 with a gold medal for a competitive essay on jaundice. He was retained at the university to prepare for scientific work in the laboratories of Professor A. I. Babukhin and I. F. Klein and in the clinic for nervous diseases of Professor A. Ya. Kozhevnikov. To Roth, together with A. Ya. Kozhevnikov and S. S. Korsakov, belongs the honor of creating the Moscow school of neuropathologists and psychiatrists. In 1877–79, Roth worked in the clinics and laboratories of Paris (Vulpian, Charcot, Magnan, Ranvier, Claude Bernard, Broca, and others), Berlin (Virchow, Frerichs, Leyden, Westphal, and others), and Vienna (Meynert, Obersteiner, Benedikt, Rosenthal, and others). While serving as a resident at the Staro-Ekaterininskaya Hospital in Moscow (1881–1890), he created the first municipal nervous ward; at the same hospital, Roth organized a school for female medical assistants (feldsheritsy). In 1895, for his work on muscular atrophy, Roth received the degree of Doctor of Medicine honoris causa and the title of extraordinary professor. From 1902–11, Roth was an ordinary and later an emeritus professor at the Department of Nervous Diseases of Moscow University. Roth belonged to the liberal-progressive group of the professoriate and in 1911, due to a protest against the activities of Kasso, he left the university. Together with Charcot, Vulpian, Erb, and other contemporaries, Roth contributed much to the identification of separate forms of muscular atrophy and the dissection of spinal symptom complexes accompanied by muscle atrophy. He also developed the clinical picture of lesions of the gray matter of the spinal cord and the precise signs of syringomyelia. Roth identified a special form of neuralgia of the thigh (meralgia paraesthetica), which bears the name "Roth-Bernhardt disease"; he also developed the question of the distinctive signs of organic and functional hemiplegia, pseudobulbar paralysis, and other topics. Roth wrote little due to the extremely high demands he placed on scientific work and, in particular, on his own creative output; he left only 30 works in Russian and foreign languages, but all his works can be called classical. Roth was a founder and for many years served as chairman of the Society of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists in Moscow, editor of the "Korsakov Journal of Neuropathology and Psychiatry" (Moscow, since 1901), took an active part in the Pirogov Society and Pirogov congresses, organized the International Congress in Moscow in 1897 and edited 8 volumes of its proceedings, repeatedly took an active part in international congresses of physicians, created the Shanyavsky People's University in Moscow (now the building of the Sverdlov University), organized the Kozhevnikov Neurological Institute and built a building for it at the clinic for nervous diseases, was the first proponent of establishing public sanatoriums for the mentally ill and organizing the "All-Russian Society for the Fight Against Nervous Diseases and the Establishment of Sanatoriums," was for many years a councilor of the Moscow City Duma, etc. It is necessary to especially note the remarkable personal moral qualities of Roth, which made him extremely popular, loved, and respected among specialists, physicians, students, staff, patients, and broad public circles. The most important works of Roth: "Symptomatology of Spinal Gliomatosis" (Moscow, 1887); "Nosographic Review of Progressive Muscular Atrophy" (Moscow, 1887); "The Question of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Its Relation to Progressive Muscle Atrophy" (Moscow, 1889); "On the Diagnosis of Spinal Gliomatosis" (Moscow, 1890); "On Myxedema and Its Treatment" (Moscow, 1893); "Muscular Atrophy" (Moscow, 1895); together with V. Muratov - "On the Pathology of the Cerebrum" (Moscow, 1890).