Our Notes & References

A meticulously-detailed account of clinical practice and research at a pioneering paediatric hospital in St. Petersburg. Illustrated with numerous tables, graphs, and reproductions of hand-drawn charts.

The Elizavetinsky (also called Princess Elisabeth) Clinical Hospital for Young Children was founded in 1844 as a private charitable organisation at the behest of Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, two of whose daughters had died as infants, and named in honour of Grand Duchess Elizaveta Mikhailovna, a granddaughter of Tsar Paul I. (After the Bolshevik Revolution it was renamed the Louis Pasteur Clinical Hospital.) The first paediatric hospital in Russia, also in St. Petersburg, had been founded a decade earlier; but the Elizavetinsky was the first in the world to focus on the treatment of children under the age of three (‘Formirovanie’).

The report describes the development of the hospital, including details on buildings and facilities, and various departments such as ambulatory care, surgery, and infectious diseases. It offers copious patient statistics and a section devoted to the problem of the high mortality rate among children suffering from tuberculosis. The authors also include discussions of various digestive, respiratory, and infectious ailments, as well as a list of research publications by doctors on staff and an expense report for 1893. The preface is by Thomas Woldemar von Reitz, who had been heading the Hospital for 25 years, since 1869.

Rare: we couldn’t find any other copy going through the market in recent times. We could trace two copies in the US (NYPL and NLM) and one in both main Russian libraries (RGB and RNB).

Bibliography

“Formirovanie klinicheskikh tsentrov” (online medfox.ru).