Valentin Felixovich Voyno-Yasenetsky (Saint Luke) as an organizer of healthcare in pre-revolutionary Russia

Abstract

Valentin Felixovich Voyno-Yasenetsky, glorified in 2000 at the Council of New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church as Saint Luke of Crimea, is known throughout the world as a brilliant surgeon and a major scientist who discovered and developed such areas of medicine as regional anesthesia and purulent surgery. His scientific and medical achievements, as well as his unusual life path that does not fit into any framework, somewhat obscure another facet of this man’s personality — he was a talented organizer of healthcare, although the conditions in which he had to demonstrate these qualities were not the most favorable. The article is the first to examine the facts of V.F. Voyno-Yasenetsky’s biography related to the organization of health care. During the Russian-Japanese War, immediately after graduating from the medical faculty of the Kyiv University of Saint Vladimir, he was the head of two departments of the Chita Red Cross Hospital, in 1906–1916 he was actively involved in organizing the treatment process in the medical institutions entrusted to him, participated in preventive anti-epidemic measures, put forward creative initiatives at the zemstvo level. Thanks to his initiatives, a scientific medical library was created, the organization of the treatment process in the zemstvo hospitals of Ardatov, Lyubazh, Fatezh, Romanovka and especially Pereslavl-Zalessky was changed. For 6.5 years he worked at the last mentioned zemstvo hospital as a chief physician, adapting it during the First World War for an infirmary for the wounded and organizing the treatment of the wounded at the district level. He also put forward useful initiatives in the field of exchanging medical experience and medical statistics.