Vladimir Karlovich Rot

(also V. K. Roth). Born Sept. 23 (Oct. 5), 1848, in Orel; died Jan. 6 (19), 1916, in Moscow. Russian neuropathologist. Swedish by descent.

In 1871, Rot graduated from the medical faculty of Moscow University. He worked in A. I. Babukhin’s laboratory and, from 1873, in A. Ia. Kozhevnikov’s clinic. From 1895 he was a professor of the subdepartment of nervous diseases at Moscow University. In 1911 he retired as a protest against the reactionary policies of the tsar’s minister of education, L. A. Kasso.

Rot’s principal works dealt with muscular atrophy, syringomyelia, the distinguishing characteristics of organic and functional paralyses, cerebrospinal gliomatosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He was the first to describe the clinical treatment of neuralgia of the lateral cutaneous nerve of the thigh (Roth-Bernhardt disease).

Rot was one of the founders of the Moscow Society of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists in 1890, the A. Ia. Kozhevni-kov Neurological Institute, and the A. L. Shaniavskii-People’s University. He was also one of the founders of the Zhurnal nevropatologii i psikhiatrii im. S. S. Korsakova and its coeditor from 1901. Rot initiated the creation in Russia of public sanatoria for those with nervous diseases. He organized the 12th International Medical Congress in Moscow in 1897 and was the editor of its proceedings. Rot founded a school of neuropathology, whose followers included E. K. Sepp and V. V. Kramer.