Zabolotny, Daniil Kirillovich

ZABOLOTNY, Daniil Kirillovich (born 1866), a well-known bacteriologist and epidemiologist. Zabolotny served as a professor at the Military Medical Academy and the Leningrad Medical Institute, as head of the epidemiological department of the State Institute of Experimental Medicine, and of the department of microbiology and epidemiology of the Institute of Preventive Sciences of the Military Medical Academy. He was President of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, a full member of the All-Union Academy of Sciences, and a member of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. He graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics in Odessa (1889) and the Faculty of Medicine in Kiev (1894). Zabolotny's first scientific works were conducted in Odessa and concerned snow microbes (candidate dissertation), luminous infusoria (a new species of infusoria of the genus Peridinium was found in the Khadzhibey Estuary), and the cholera vibrio (experimental work on the infection and immunization of gophers via the intestine). The study of the cholera vibrio continued in Kiev, where Zabolotny, together with I. G. Savchenko, conducted experiments on self-immunization via the mouth using killed cultures of the cholera vibrio, followed by verification through the ingestion of live cultures (1893). In 1908, Zabolotny began studying the epidemiology of cholera in the Volga region and St. Petersburg (the results were published together with S. I. Zlatogorov, G. S. Kulesha, and R. I. Yakovlev in a special monograph in 1913). Zabolotny made a most valuable contribution to epidemiology with his work on the study of plague. In 1897, Zabolotny, together with V. K. Vyskovich, went to India to study plague, where he worked together with Yersin, Haffkine, and the Austrian and German expeditions; in the following years, he took part in scientific expeditions to Arabia, China, and Mongolia (1898), and to Persia and the Kirghiz steppes (1899). As a result of this work, the paths and methods of plague infection and methods of immunization were clarified, and the hypothesis regarding the role of wild rodents (marmots, gophers) in the spread of plague was substantiated.

In 1910–1914, Zabolotny took a leading role in the study of the pneumonic plague epidemic in Manchuria, plague outbreaks in Turkestan, in the Kirghiz steppes, in the Ural and Don regions, and in the investigation of the causes of the endemicity of plague in the southeast of Russia, where, with his assistance, the first anti-plague laboratories were opened. Other works by Zabolotny concern the study of experimental syphilis, typhus and typhoid fever, diphtheria, malaria, etc. Zabolotny is a founder and honorary member of the Microbiological Society in Leningrad, a permanent participant and member of the presidium of all All-Union congresses of bacteriologists, epidemiologists, and sanitary physicians; he is an honorary member of the Microbiological Society in Vienna, a member of the Society for the Study of Tropical Pathology in Paris, and a founding member of the International Society of Microbiologists. Zabolotny has published more than 80 scientific works. The most important of them are: 'Material on Plague in India' (Russian Archive of Pathology, Clinical Medicine and Bacteriology, Vol. III, Issue 4, 1897); 'Studies on Plague' (Archive of Biological Sciences, Vol. VIII, No. 1 and 4, 1899); 'Plague. Epidemiology, Pathogenesis and Prophylaxis' (St. Petersburg, 1907); 'Outline of the Development of the Cholera Epidemic of 1907–1908 in Russia and Anti-Cholera Measures' (Archive of Biological Sciences, Vol. XIV, No. 5, 1909); 'On the Question of the Pathogenesis of Syphilis' (dissertation, St. Petersburg, 1909); 'The Cholera Epidemic of 1908–1909 in St. Petersburg' (St. Petersburg, 1910); 'Pneumonic Plague in Manchuria in 1910–1911' (Report of the Russian Scientific Expedition, edited by D. Zabolotny, Petrograd, 1915); 'Organization and Results of the Survey of Endemic Plague Foci' (Archive of Biological Sciences, Vol. XXII, 1922); 'Plague in the Southeast of the USSR' (edited by D. Zabolotny and V. Omelyansky, Leningrad, 1926); 'Fundamentals of Epidemiology' (Moscow-Leningrad, 1927), and others. Most of the works have been translated into foreign languages. Zabolotny has also published a number of popular brochures on epidemiology.