For several centuries in St. Petersburg there has been and successfully operates a medical institution called "Obukhov Hospital". Today, most of it is closed for a large-scale reconstruction - which means it's time to remember its history and find out how it all began.
A few words about the name
Really, why is this hospital in St. Petersburg - Obukhovskaya? After all, usually all medical institutions are assigned one or another serial number. Everything is actually very simple. The fact is that it was named so back in the distant years of the eighteenth century (namely, it was then that the hospital was built, but we will return to this), since the Obukhovsky bridge and the eponymous avenue were located next to it. Therefore, they did not think for a long time - without further ado, they slyly named the new hospital accordingly.
How it all began
The life of the Obukhov hospital was presented by the famous architects Quarenghi and Ruska - or rather, its first building erected on the Fontanka. This happened back in 1784, but, strictly speaking, this date is "birthday"cannot be counted. The thing is that since that year, the hospital has its own, separate, stone building, followed by many others.
However, in fact, the Obukhov hospital in St. Petersburg began its existence five years earlier - on the territory of the former estate of Artemy Volynsky, vegetating in several seedy wooden rooms. There were only sixty beds, while the new stone building included as many as three hundred. It was decided to place a men's section there.
Further existence
Obukhov hospital, which, by the way, became one of the first city hospitals, quickly gained popularity, and therefore grew at an accelerated pace. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, several more buildings were erected, which housed various departments, including the women's one.
Gradually, other buildings appeared at the Obukhov city hospital, and not just medical buildings. So, a church was erected and subsequently consecrated in the name of the image of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow.”
It happened in 1828, and at the same time, a few months earlier, the psychiatric department, or rather, the insane asylum, "spun off" from the hospital. It became an independent hospital, which received a name similar to the church. And a year later, the first paramedical school with a four-year course of study began to function on the basis of the Obukhov hospital.
The biggestThe hospital on the Fontanka embankment became the scientific and medical center of St. Petersburg by the end of the nineteenth century, and by the beginning of the twentieth century it was only firmly entrenched in this title. It was also confirmed by the fact that in the thirties of the last century the above-mentioned hospital received the right to be the base for several medical institutes at once, and in 1932 the Higher Medical Courses began to work with it (later they were transformed into an independent university for future Hippocrates - the Third Leningrad).
From the middle of the century all sorts of unifications, renamings and transformations began. The Obukhov hospital was tied together with the medical institute, as a result of which the Naval Medical Academy was born. During the Great Patriotic War, the Naval Hospital was located in its buildings. Some time later - to be more precise, in 1956 - the Military Academy was added to the Naval Academy, bearing the name of Sergei Mironovich Kirov.
Our days
Since the merger of the two academies back in 1956, several departments and clinics related to surgery and hospital therapy, urology, propaedeutics and some other areas of medical science have been located in the buildings of the Obukhov hospital. The clinic has been successfully functioning all these years, but for the fourth year since 2015, most of its departments have been closed for major repairs. Many buildings after it will significantly change their content.
So, in the main building after the reconstructiona large medical and diagnostic center with various departments, including naval surgery, should appear. The educational building, which is also very worn out, will retain its own building - but in the vivarium after the completion of all work, according to the plan of the reenactors, the department of forensic medicine, the mortuary and the pathoanatomical laboratory will be located. The changes will also affect many other buildings, or rather, what was inside them.
Hospital Staff
It is interesting that when the hospital in the Obukhov hospital just started its work in the distant eighteenth century, there were only five people among the clinic staff: one doctor and four of his assistants. A sharp increase in personnel began after the opening of the paramedic school and reached its peak towards the end of the nineteenth century. There are quite a few well-known people among the doctors who worked at the Obukhov hospital at various times.
For example, Ivan Grekov is a professor and surgeon, who, by the way, in the late twenties and early thirties of the last century was also the chief physician of the above-mentioned clinic. Or Vladimir Kernig, who, in addition to being a highly qualified specialist in the field of therapy, remained known to history as one of the organizers of medical education for women - in our country, of course. It was also in the Obukhov hospital that Sergei Mirotvortsev worked and received patients - not only a participant in three whole wars (Russian-Japanese, World War I and World War II), but also a well-known surgeon, a member of the Academy of Sciences in the field ofmedicine.
Services
Even in the nineteenth century, the Obukhov hospital was paid. Then the patients were forced to unfasten for their treatment - in not the best conditions initially - four rubles, and later as much as eighteen.
Today, despite the fact that free treatment in the clinic, of course, is carried out, paid services are also provided there. And these services are different - from a consultation of a doctor to a procedure or diagnosis. Another question is what exactly at the present time to get these procedures, consultations and others like them is hardly possible due to the current renovation of the premises.
Contact information
The address of the Obukhov hospital, or rather, its main building, which now houses the clinics of the Naval and Military Medical Academies, is easy to remember. This is the embankment of the Fontanka River, house number 106.
As for the other buildings of the hospital, they are scattered around the square of the Obukhov Hospital and overlook, among other things, Zagorodny Prospekt.
How to get there
Finding the right institution is not difficult - it is practically the very center of the city, not far from Sadovaya and Sennaya Square. You should take the metro to the stop "Technological Institute", go to the Fontanka and turn right. A hospital will be located less than a hundred meters away.
Interesting facts
- The most famous doctor, scientist, academician Nikolai Pirogov gave lectures and performed operations at the Obukhov hospital in St. Petersburg. On the territory of the clinica monument was erected to him.
- The Obukhov hospital was mentioned in their works "The Queen of Spades" and "Lefty" by Alexander Pushkin and Nikolai Leskov, respectively.
- It was the yellow color of the insane asylum that caused all asylums to be called "yellow houses".
- Monuments of cultural and architectural heritage are three buildings of the hospital: the main one on the Fontanka, the women's department and the medical one in memory of Prince Oldenburg.
- Sergei Yesenin from Angleterre was brought to this medical facility.
- In the early years, the hospital was notorious for not caring for the poor or caring about the unsanitary conditions that prevailed. Then this medical institution in St. Petersburg was simply called: "The Abode of Sorrow." It was only when the paramedic school started working at the hospital that the situation changed dramatically.
- In the twenties of the twentieth century in St. Petersburg, Lenka Panteleev, a bandit and raider, terrified with his gang and criminal acts. After he was killed during the arrest, his body was exhibited precisely in the morgue of the Obukhov hospital - so that the residents of the city could see for themselves that the terrible robber would not harm anyone else.
- It was in this medical institution that for the first time in Russia they began to use ether anesthesia, a plaster cast and an X-ray machine.
This is the story of the Obukhov hospital - one of the oldest medical institutions in the city on the Neva.
