Ippolit Davydovskii

Born July 20 (Aug. 1), 1887, in Danilov; died June 11, 1968, in Moscow. Soviet pathologicoanatomist; academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944) and Hero of Socialist Labor (1957).

Davydovskii graduated from the department of medicine of Moscow University in 1910. He worked as a health officer and zemstvo (district administration) physician. He became director of the subdepartment of pathological anatomy of the Second Moscow Institute of Medicine in 1930. In 1925 he reorganized his method of teaching pathological anatomy, which had been presented in terms of nosology rather than organopathy. In 1924, at Davydovskii’s initiative, clinical and pathologicoanatomical diagnoses were collated in the USSR. Conferences in clinical anatomy have been held since 1930. Davydovskii’s principal work dealt with pathological anatomy and the pathogenesis of infectious diseases, the pathology of combat injuries, the organization of prosection, general pathology, and the philosophy of medicine; his work initiated a major trend in pathology. Davydovskii was vice-president of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1946–50 and 1957–60), and in 1965 he was named honorary chairman of the All-Union Society of Pathologicoanatomists. He was awarded the Lenin Prize (1964), two Orders of Lenin, and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.