Krol, Mikhail Borisovich

Born Feb. 18 (Mar. 2), 1879, in Minsk; died Aug. 6, 1939, in Moscow. Soviet neuropathologist; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Byelorussian SSR (1931); corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1939). Member of the CPSU from 1930.

Krol’ graduated from the medical faculty of Moscow University in 1901; he worked in the clinic of L. S. Minor. He founded (in 1921) the medical department of the Byelorussian State University in Minsk; he became chief of its subdepartment of nervous diseases in 1923. From 1933 he directed the clinic of nervous diseases of the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine.

Krol’ used the method of chronaxy, which permitted study of delicate functions of the nervous system, in clinical practice. He indicated the relationship of gnosis, praxis, and speech. He clinically demonstrated the significance of the adaptive role of the autonomous nervous system. He studied viral neuroinfections (rabies, typhus, leprosy) and in 1937–38 the new disease taiga encephalitis. He was one of the attending physicians to V. I. Lenin. KroF was chairman of the All-Union Association of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists, and editor in chief of the journal Nevropatologiia i psikhiatriia (Neuropathology and Psychiatry).