Participants and subprojects
Anna Afanasyeva, postdoctoral researcher at HSE (Moscow)
Medical geography in the practices of Russian administration in the Kazakh steppe, 1770–1870
This project will focus on the ways medical geography was implemented into the practices of managing the local populations and environments in the western part of the Kazakh steppe. It will concentrate on the following tasks: 1) to analyse the language of medical-topographical descriptions that were created about the region, the transformation of this language over the century from 1770 to 1870, and its role in defining the perspectives of the steppe’s integration into the empire; 2) to explore the collective and individual biographies of the groups of actors (both Russian and Kazakh) who participated in various medical initiatives of Russian administration in the region; 3) to examine the public health measures of the Russian state in the steppe (e.g., vaccination, hospital treatment of the local population or the establishment of quarantines during the epidemics) and to identify the place of medical geography in providing the theoretical grounds for Russian public health policies in this imperial borderland.
Zarina Gatina, predoctoral researcher at LMU
Medical-geographical analyses and administrative practice. Geographical research and the Medical College and the Medical Council between 1760 and 1830
This project examines what the two highest institutions of medical administration in the Russian empire did with the medical-topographical descriptions compiled by physicians about the Russian empire. Who worked with this material for what purpose and results? Which laws or directions were issued on the basis of the material? Because the descriptions contain many direct and indirect references to the Prussian and Austrian way of organising medical administration (both civilian and military), they can be read as a blueprint for reforms in Russia on the basis of concepts of medical geography. Not least, they shaped the implementation of Johan Peter Frank’s ideas of medical police in Russia.
Elena Lisitsyna, predoctoral researcher at LMU
The role of medicine in the Russian naval expeditions between 1764 and 1829
In the period under consideration, fourteen Russian naval expeditions to the Arctic Ocean, around the continents and even to the Antarctica were conducted with the help of international crews. This part of the project focuses on the medical planning and organisation of these expeditions, the training of maritime doctors and their duties on board. How were concepts of medical geography applied in regimes of hygiene at sea or in harbours? What was the impact of Austrian studies on cholera or the British and French colonial experience? And how did Russian naval physicians contribute to the international endeavour of medical geography and cartography? The project will examine the writings of German, French and British doctors, but will be also based on archival material from the Russian State Maritime Archive in St Petersburg where reports by physicians about diverse maritime expeditions are kept. These reports gave the Russian empire a place on the world map of civilisations and epidemics.
Ruslan Mitrofanov, postdoctoral researcher at HSE
From geography to mathematics: Medical-statistical reports by naval, military and civilian physicians
In the archive of the “Medical Council” [in the Russian Ministry of the Interior] medical-topographical descriptions were replaced by medical-statistical reports in the 1840s. This change points to a reconceptualization of power which was increasingly connected with exact knowledge, arguments based on numbers, recording and accounting of natural and human resources in the Russian empire. These ideas were adapted from Prussia and thus form a case study of the late history of medical geography. Statistics were regarded as a universal and (supposedly) objective tool for rational rule; they had been applied in the 1840s/1850s in the Ministry of State Assets and the Ministry of the Interior to prepare agrarian reforms (Lincoln 1989; Khristoforov 2015; Loskustova 2016) and quickly gained acceptance in the medical sciences. This project examines how statistics were compiled and used in medical reports and how and for which purposes they were utilized by the government.
Andreas Renner, principal investigator at LMU
Medical geography at sea
In this project the concepts of medical geography are examined in relation with Russian explorations of the sea which flourished during the century under examination. Starting from imperial and other notions of “the sea” in Russian culture, the plan is to focus, first, on basic medical research, i.e. on the influence travelling at sea or seawater or the “wooden world” of a ship (Rodger 1986) had on human (and animal) health. Second, the role medical experts played in establishing and maintaining the disciplinary regimes on board especially of war-ships will be studied in detail, including the big array of advisory literature and handbooks written by physicians both for internal use and for the public. Third, special attention will be given to the exploration of the Arctic ocean. How did the ideas of medical geography stand the test under extreme conditions? Fourth, the social-political profile of naval doctors (who constituted one eighth of MDs serving in Russia’s armed forces) comprised roughly one eight of military is to be reconstructed: a) as a maybe distinct social group among physicians or other civil/military servants, b) on the individual level, following “imperial biographies” and travelogues of individual doctors. The basic idea of the project is to show, that Russian maritime physicians unlike their British colleagues did not so much support the empire’s expansion (though this did play a role with regard to Russia’s ambitions in the Pacific), but rather in establishing the notion of Russia as a naval power, maybe weaker but not backward compared with the British paragon.
Elena Vishlenkova, principal investigator at HSE
A Bridge between West and East: Russian transfer of medical geographical knowledge
This research project examines medical discourse systems focussing on four aspects: 1) The media (agents and situations) through which medical-geographical knowledge from different countries were transformed in Russia and eventually became “Western science” turned into a paragon. In this context the language of medical discourse (Latin, German) and the problems associated with translations will be analysed as well as the hiring of foreign physicians for Russian service and research-projects conducted with the help of prominent foreign scholars, for example the Humboldt- expedition of 1829 or the impact of Johann Peter Frank, the “inventor” of “medical police” (a political application of medical geography). 2) An analysis of specific Russian concepts of medical geography and their change over time; 3) The acquisition of local knowledge from the Russian empire through representatives of “global science” and the processes of knowledge circulation triggered; 4) The conversion of individual knowledge and experience of physicians (gained through observation and metering) into collective, professional knowledge, assessed in medical-geographical dissertations, overviews in journals, letters to the editors, professors’ lectures or reports to the Medical Council in the Ministry of the Interior. Arguably, the analysis of knowledge mediation will help answer the question about the costs involved in the transfer of knowledge, i.e. the specific character and limitations of side of the recipients, misunderstandings and also about the conditions in which Russians physicians established a medical-geographical tradition of their own.
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