Samoilovich, Danilo Samoilovich

Samoilovich, Danilo Samoilovich 

(D. S. Sush-chinskii). Born Dec. 11 (22), 1744 (according to other data, 1743, 1745, or 1746); died Feb. 20 (Mar. 4), 1805, in Nikolaev. Russian military physician; founder of Russian epidemiology.

From 1761 to 1770, Samoilovich was a student and physician’s assistant at the St. Petersburg Admiralty Hospital. In 1771 he was a staff physician at the military hospital in Moscow. He received his doctor of medicine degree in 1784. From that year Samoilovich participated in the struggle against plague, and in 1793 he became physician in charge of quarantines in southern Russia. From 1800 he was an inspector for the Black Sea Medical Board. He generalized the experience gained in the struggle to control plague, which he regarded as a special nosologic form. Samoilovich was the first Russian scientist to give a clinical description of plague, and he came to the conclusion that after recovering from the disease, the patient was no longer susceptible to it. He demonstrated the contagiousness of the disease and substantiated the necessity for an-tiplague inoculations. Samoilovich developed a congruous system of antiepidemic measures, including reporting each incidence of the disease, isolating the patient, carrying out disinfection, involving the populace in the control of epidemics, and setting up quarantines. Samoilovich was a member of 12 foreign academies of science.

WORKS

Izbr. proizv., vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1949–52.

REFERENCE

Sigal, B. S. “Danilo Samoilovich—osnovopolozhnik otechestvennoi epidemiologii.” Vrachebnoe delo, 1955, no. 4.

B. D. PETROV