The Presidential Library will open an electronic reading room in the Central State Medical Academy

The Presidential Library expands the circle of its partners, and there is no exception for the sphere of medicine. The library on 3 Senate Square in St. Petersburg concluded a cooperation agreement with the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Additional Professional Education “Central State Medical Academy.” Newly created remote electronic reading room of the Presidential Library Academy will allow freely use of its wealthiest fund, which currently numbers more than 550,000 entries.

The content of the Presidential Library, which specializes in building a national electronic repository on the history of Russia, the theory and practice of Russian statehood, as well as the Russian language as the state language of the Russian Federation, contains the digital copies of the ancient Russian manuscripts, rare books, declassified documents, and photo- and audiovisual materials — including those relesed by the library itself.

A special place in the library fund belongs to the sources on medicine and its history.

In the Report on the state of public health and the organization of medical care in Russia for 1914, prepared by Chief Medical Inspector Office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which consists of the reports beginning from 1855, is written: “This report due to wartime circumstances is incomplete and does not contain the information on all provinces of Russia. The reporting year is generally favorable in terms of sanitation. Mortality of the population in 45 provinces of European Russia has dropped to 26.7 per 1,000 residents. The natural increase in population was high, amounting to 17.0 per 1,000 of population.”

A more detailed and realistic analysis is given in the report of A. V. Amsterdamsky regarding the Development of a network of medical posts in the St. Petersburg Governorate from 1870 up to 1908 on the occasion of IX Sanitary Congress of Physicians and Representatives of County Councils (Zemstvos) of the St. Petersburg Governorate (1908): “We do not have precise information on the organization of medical affairs in the province by the day of introduction of zemstvo institutions (1865). According to sketchy reports and notes, it can be assumed that this organization was not high in terms of quality and quantitatively. In most of the county-level cities, hospitals were actually in charge of a paramedic, under the supervision of a district doctor. The state and county peasants had 1-2 hospitals; in some volost (district) settlements — paramedics, which are kept at the expense of the volost. In county factories and plants, as a rule, there was no medical organization at all. On very few manors, at the expense of landowners, a paramedic was kept, who treated the entire district with the most simple means, mainly decoctions and herbal tinctures.”

Of particular interest are books on traditional medicine of different regions and volosts, for example, National Medicine of the Chuvash People by Professor N. V. Nikolsky (1929). “Contemporary scientific medicine, which has an arsenal of pharmacological drugs, surgical aids and devices… is almost approaching the exact sciences <…> Therefore, to compare a practical significance of folk medicine and the achievement of scientific medicine is like to compare an airplane’s and a cart’ movement ahead…” Also the author of the introductory article V. Anisov pointes out that the study will be useful to every doctor, “will give him the opportunity to study in detail the village sorcery, wakefulness and roots that feed it,” will help understand patient psychology and “successfully fight against all unsanitary aspects of the life of the Chuvash village. This work of folkloric nature is of undoubted interest <…> for all studying the Chuvash people — the beautiful examples of poetic folk art, spells, incantations, material on the mythological, cosmogony views of the Chuvash are spread on its pages.”

The staff employees of the Central Medical Academy will find a lot of interesting in the documents and rare books of the Presidential Library on a health care. According to the concluded agreement, the Academy will participate in the formation, constant replenishment of the information array of the Presidential Library with materials from its fund. In addition, the parties to the agreement will conduct joint training seminars, courses, scientific and practical conferences and other outreach campaigns.