Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov (Russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Пирого́в; 25 November [O.S. 13 November] 1810 – 5 December [O.S. 23 November] 1881) was a Russian scientist, medical doctor, pedagogue, public figure, and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1847), one of the most widely recognized Russian physicians. Considered to be the founder of field surgery, he was the first surgeon to use anaesthesia in a field operation (1847) and one of the first surgeons in Europe to use ether as an anaesthetic. He is credited with the invention of various kinds of surgical operations and developing his own technique of using plaster casts to treat fractured bones.
Biography
Childhood and training Nikolay Pirogov was born in Moscow, the 13th of 14 children of Ivan Ivanovich Pirogov (born around 1772), a major in the commissary service and a treasurer at the Moscow Food Depot whose own father came from peasants and served as a soldier in Peter the Great's army before retiring and opening a brewery in Moscow; Pirogov's mother Elizaveta Ivanovna Pirogova (née Novikova) belonged to an old Moscow merchant family and was four years younger than her husband. He learned to read in several languages as a child. His father died in 1824, leaving his family destitute. Pirogov originally intended to become a civil servant, but the family doctor Yefrem Mukhin who was a professor of anatomy and physiology at the Imperial Moscow University persuaded the authorities to accept a 14-year-old Pirogov as a student. In 1828 he finished the Faculty of Medicine and entered the Imperial University of Dorpat where he studied under Professor Moyer (who had himself studied under Antonio Scarpa) and received a doctorate on ligation of the ventral aorta in 1832. During his doctoral studies, he participated in the elimination of the cholera epidemic, saw many deaths from it, on the basis of this he made many sketches of posthumous changes in the muscles of those who died from cholera, which he subsequently combined in the corresponding atlas. In May 1833 he travelled to Berlin, meeting such surgeons as Karl Ferdinand von Graefe, Johann Nepomuk Rust and Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach at the University of Berlin. Professor Bernhard von Langenbeck taught Pirogov how to properly use the scalpel. Pirogov also visited the University of Göttingen and on his return served as a professor at the University of Dorpat (1836–1840).
Years as doctor and field surgeon In October 1840 Pirogov took up an appointment as professor of surgery at the Imperial Academy of Military Medicine in Saint Petersburg, and undertook three years of military service in this period. He first used ether as an anaesthetic in 1847, and investigated cholera from 1848. In search of an effective teaching method, he decided to apply anatomical research on frozen corpses. Pirogov called it “ice anatomy”. Thus, a new medical discipline was born – topographic anatomy. After a few years of such study anatomy Pirogov published the first anatomical atlas, Topographical anatomy of the human body (vol. 1–4, 1851–1854). In 1847 he left for the Caucasus, where the Russian army waged a war against the local mountain peoples. Here, he wanted to test the operating methods he had developed in the field. In the Caucasus, he first applied dressing with bandages soaked in starch.
He worked as an army surgeon in the Crimean War, arriving in Simferopol on 11 December 1854. From his works in the Crimea, he is considered to be the father of Russian field surgery. He followed the work of Louis-Joseph Seutin in introducing plaster casts for setting broken bones, and developed a new osteoplastic method for amputation of the foot, known as the "Pirogov amputation". He was also the first to use anesthesia in the field, particularly during the siege of Sevastopol (1854–55), and he introduced in Russian army a system of triage – sorting wounded soldiers into five categories. He encouraged female volunteers as an organised corps of nurses, the Khrestovozdvizhenskaya (ru) at the Saint Petersburg Charity Encyclopedia community of nurses established by Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna in 1854.
Return and retirement
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