On Land and Sea. Medical geography in the Russian empire (1770—1870)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Andreas Renner
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History ; History of Science
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 405969656

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

At the interface of imperial history and medical history, the project examined the function of doctors and medical knowledge for the expansion and consolidation of the tsarist empire between 1770 and 1780. The period was not only the last major expansion phase of the tsarist autocracy (with conquests in the Crimea and the steppe region, Alaska and the Amur region, in the Caucasus and Central Asia), but also a time of upheaval in medical research and practice as well as a period of professionalisation of doctors. They did not emancipate themselves from government control - if only because the state and the military remained the main employers. But doctors not only played a pioneering role in the modernisation of the tsarist civil service, especially in the upgrading of scientific, systematically generated knowledge and formal training paths. Doctors also provided systematic knowledge about the Russian Empire, especially about the newly conquered territories. However, due to understaffing and underpayment of the medical apparatus, many of these projects remained unrealised. With its analysis of medical expertise, the project took up the role of physicians as pillars of imperial rule, which had long been a theme for the European overseas colonies. Doctors were responsible for protecting the conquerors from the unknown and dangerous diseases of the subjugated and designed powerful instruments of discipline in the form of hygiene rules. They thus contributed to the construction of the colonial "other". Though in the Tsarist land empire the distinction remained blurred. The conceptual springboard to the period under investigation was provided by the contemporary debate on medical geography - a discussion, by no means conducted only by physicians, about the influence of the environment on health and disease and also about how health and disease could be controlled by manipulating the environment or acting with foresight. Medical geography was a popular concept among Russian doctors as well, distinct from the ancient "doctrine of the humours", and it did not disappear with the breakthrough of the bacteriological paradigm in the late 19th century. The project was a binational cooperation, but in practice it did not fall into two parts. Rather, the interconnectedness of the six sub-projects, which dealt with complementary topics (arctic climate vs. hot steppe climate) or examined the transfer of imperial expertise from different perspectives (in terms of the history of ideas and social history), proved its worth. This interlocking of the projects also shows the most important result (so far): a collective monograph on medical geography in the Tsarist Empire.

Publications

• Medicina na voennykh sudach [Medizin auf Kriegsschiffen], in: Renner, Vishlenkova (Hg.): Istorija mediciny i medicinskoj geografii, S. 299-322.
  Lisitsyna, Elena
  
• Mediko‐biologičeskoe obosnovanie sostojanija rossijskich gorodov v trudach I.J. Lerche i E.D. Klarka [Medizinisch-biologische Gründe für den Zustand der russischen Städte in den Werken von J.J. Lerche und E.D. Clarke], in: Novoe prošloe, 2017, No. 1, S. 132‐146.
  Lisitsyna, Elena
  
• Istoričeskoe izučenie medicinskoj geografii v Rossii (Historische Erforschung der medizinischen Geographie in Russland), in: Problemy social’noj gigieny, zdravoochranenija i istorii mediciny, 5/2019, S. 924-929.
  Renner, Andreas & Višlenkova, Elena
  
• Polish medicine in the Russian Empire in the first third of the 19th century. Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki, (2), 61-78.
  Vishlenkova, Elena & Zatravkin, Sergiei
  
• Rossijskie vrači v poiskach jazyka samoanaliza: ponjatija nasilija i gumanosti v professional’nom diskurse psichatrov Rossijskoj imperii, konec XIX-načalo XX v.), (Russische Ärzte auf der Suche nach einer Sprache der Selbstanalyse: Vorstellungen von Gewalt und Menschlichkeit im professionellen Diskurs der Psychiater des Russischen Reiches (Ende des 19. - Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts), in: Voprosy istorii estestvoznanii i techniki 40 (2019), S. 292–321
  Mitrofanov, Ruslan
  
• From a Natural Object to a Medical Resource: The Production of Knowledge about Petroleum by Johann Jakob Lerche. Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki, (2), 9-28.
  Lisitsyna, Elena
  
• Karantiny i sanitarnye konvencii Rossii s severnymi morskimi deržavami (pervaja tret’ XIX veka) (Russlands Quarantänen und Sanitätskonventionen mit den nördlichen Seemächten (erstes Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts), in: Voenno-meditsinskii zhurnal 341 (2020), No. 8, S. 73-83
  Višlenkova, Elena & Zatravkin, Sergej
  
• The finances and statistics in materials of the G. E. Rhein Commission. Problems of Social Hygiene Public Health and History of Medicine, 28(2).
  Yakovenko, V. A.
  
• Belilovskij: Biografija medika v kontekste ėpochi (Belilovsky: Biographie eines Arztes im Kontext der Epoche), in: Novoe proshloe (2021 г.)
  Jakovenko, Vjačeslav
  
• Bolezni Rossii: mediko-geografičeskie issledovanija I. Ja. Lerche [Krankheiten von Russland: Medizinisch-geographische Studien von J.J. Lerche], in: Problemy social‘noj gigieny, zdravoochranenija i istorii mediciny, 2021, No 4, S. 1011–1016.
  Lisitsyna, Elena
  
• Hot climates theories in European medical literature of modern times. Диалог со временем, (77), 210-227.
  Афанаcьева, А.Э.
  
• Istorija mediciny i medicinskoj geografii v Rossijskoj imperii [Geschichte der Medizin und der medizinischen Geografie im Russländischen Reich], Moskau 2021. ISBN : 978-5-907348-20-2.
  Renner, Andreas & Višlenkova, Elena (Hg.)
  
• Legal regulation of the supply of medicines to the army and the public in the Russian Empire in the fi rst half of the 19th century. Istoriya meditsiny, 7(1), 13-22.
  Vishlenkova, Elena & Sharykin, Anton
  
• Medical Geography in Imperial Russia. Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 69(1), 3.
  Afanasyeva, Anna; Renner, Andreas & Vishlenkova, Elena
  
• The becoming and development of departmental medical statistic in Bavaria and Prussia (1800—1871). Problems of Social Hygiene Public Health and History of Medicine, 29(3).
  Gatina, Z. S. & Mitrofanov, R. S.
  
• Climate, Disease and Imperial Expansion: Medico-Geographical Exploration of the Kazakh Steppe Between the 1760s and 1860s. Диалог со временем, (79), 57-73.
  Афанасьева, А.Э.
  
• Epidemic and sanitary charts and tables of the second half of the XIX century as the “health passports” for Russian territories. Hygiene and sanitation, 101(1), 102-107.
  Vishlenkova, Elena A. & Zatravkin, Sergei N.