Sklifosovskii, Nikolai Vasilevich

Born Mar. 25 (Apr. 6), 1836, near the city of Dubossary, in what is now the Moldavian SSR; died Nov. 30 (Dec. 13), 1904, in the village of Iakovtsy, Poltava Province. Russian surgeon.

Sklifosovskii graduated from Moscow University in 1859. He became a professor at the University of Kiev in 1870 and at the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy in 1871. Beginning in 1880 he was a professor and dean of the medical faculty of Moscow University. From 1893 to 1900 he was director of the Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians in St. Petersburg.

Sklifosovskii was instrumental in introducing antisepsis and asepsis into Russian surgery. He was a pioneer in the surgery of body cavities, including the surgical treatment of gynecologic disorders and diseases of the stomach, liver, biliary tract, and urinary bladder. He also developed an original operation to join bones in cases of pseudarthrosis, called Sklifosovskii’s lock or the Russian lock. Sklifosovskii developed N. I. Pirogov’s ideas, making substantial contributions to military field surgery. He emphasized the need for bringing medical care closer to the battlefield, for refraining from amputation in cases of gunshot wounds, and for using plaster bandages to immobilize wounds of the extremities.

In 1891, Sklifosovskii became coeditor of the journal Letopis’ khirurgicheskogo obshchestva (Chronicle of the Surgical Society) in Moscow. He instituted the Pirogov Congresses. He also served as president of the 12th International Congress of Physicians in Moscow in 1897 and founded and chaired the First Congress of Russian Surgeons in 1900. The Moscow Emergency Medical Care Institute was named in honor of Sklifosovskii in 1923.