Zbankov

Zbankov, Dmitry Nikolaevich (born in 1853), a well-known figure of the Pirogov Society of Physicians. After completing the Medical-Surgical Academy in 1879, he first worked as a district doctor in the Ryazan and Kostroma provinces. Zbankov took an active part in compiling the major "Zemstvo-Medical Collection" (vols. I-VII, Moscow, 1890-93). This collection served for a long time as a guiding source on questions of zemstvo medicine organization. Working then as the head of the sanitary bureau of the Smolensk provincial zemstvo, Zbankov compiled and published sanitary-statistical descriptions of factories and plants in the Smolensk province and studies on the influence of migrant trades on the morbidity of the rural population. Since 1904, Zbankov became an irremovable secretary of the Pirogov Society of Physicians. As a constant participant in Pirogov congresses and meetings and as a reporter on organizational questions, Zbankov is a faithful expression of the public moods of the physicians of that time: he hotly and openly rises against corporal punishment and capital punishment, calls for a struggle against "traumatic epidemics," speaks out against private medical practice, exposes the backwardness and bureaucratism of official medicine, organizes a department for helping the starving under the Pirogov Society, etc. Zbankov is one of the most typical representatives of the populist-social direction in medicine. Zbankov was subjected to persecution by the tsarist government in the form of searches and administrative exile from Moscow (1908-10). Zbankov is the author of a large number of articles, placed mostly in pre-revolutionary periodical press (more than 200), on socio-medical themes, which always responded to topical questions of political and public life. Zbankov compiled two bibliographical guides, which represent outstanding value: "Bibliographical Guide to Zemstvo and Medical Literature" (Moscow, 1890) and "Bibliographical Guide to Social Medical Literature for 1890-1905" (Moscow, 1907). Under Zbankov's editorship was also published an extensive collection "Urban Medicine" (Moscow, 1913).