Sergei Ivanovich Spasokukotskii

Born May 29 (June 10), 1870, in Kostroma; died Nov. 17, 1943, in Moscow. Soviet surgeon. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1942).

Spasokukotskii graduated from Moscow University in 1893. He became director of the surgical division of the Smolensk Zemstvo Hospital in 1898, of the surgical division of the Saratov Municipal Hospital in 1909, and of the surgical clinic of the medical faculty of the University of Saratov in 1912. He became head of the subdepartment of faculty surgery of the N. I. Pirogov Second Moscow Medical Institute in 1926.

Spasokukotskii’s main works dealt with gastrointestinal and thoracic surgery and with blood transfusion. He proposed methods for treating those suffering from traumatic and surgical shock. He believed that the introduction of a nutrient into the small intestine through a probe would prevent surgical shock in cases of stomach cancer and ulcers and that blind sutures would be effective in cases of bullet wounds to the head. Spasokukotskii also proposed an original way for a surgeon to perform preoperative scrubbing.

Spasokukotskii received the State Prize of the USSR in 1942 for his monograph Actinomycosis of the Lungs (published 1941). He established a school of surgery, whose members included A. N. Bakulev. Spasokukotskii was awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.