Nikolai Strazhesko

Born Dec. 17 (29), 1876, in Odessa; died June 27, 1952, in Kiev. Soviet doctor of internal medicine. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1943), the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1934), and the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1944). Hero of Socialist Labor (1947).

Strazhesko graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Kiev in 1899, after which he worked in V. P. Obraztsov’s clinic and in I. P. Pavlov’s laboratory. He became a professor at the Kiev Women’s Medical Courses in 1907 and at Novorossiia University in Odessa in 1919. He joined the staff of the Kiev Medical Institute in 1922. Strazhesko was appointed head of the subdepartment of fakul’tetskaia terapiia (course in medical sciences, with didactic technique presentation) at the institute in 1929 and head of the clinical department at the Institute of Clinical Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in 1934. He organized the Ukrainian Institute of Clinical Medicine, of which he was director from 1936 to 1941 and from 1943; the institute was named in Strazhesko’s honor in 1955.

Strazhesko’s works primarily dealt with angina pectoris, myocardial infarction, heart failure, rheumatic fever, sepsis, and diseases of the digestive organs. Strazhesko and Obraztsov gave the first clear clinical description of coronary thrombosis in 1909, two years before the American physician J. B. Herrick. This description made it possible for practicing physicians to diagnose myo-cardial infarction. Strazhesko also described many symptoms of diseases of the digestive and circulatory organs, for example, the pistol-shot sound accompanying heart blocks. In 1935, together with V. Kh. Vasilenko, he developed a classification of circulatory insufficiency that took into account metabolic (biochemical) disturbances. In 1934 he proved the hypothesis of the streptococcal etiology of rheumatic fever.

Strazhesko wrote the classic physicians’ manual Principles of the Physical Diagnosis of Abdominal Diseases (1924). He developed the functional, clinical, and experimental approach taken by Soviet internal medicine and founded a school of doctors of internal medicine.

Strazhesko was awarded two Orders of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.