Riga Medical Institute

formed in 1950 out of the medical faculty of the Latvian University, founded in 1919. In 1975 the institute included departments of general practice, pediatrics, stomatology, and pharmacy; a department for the advanced training of physicians and pharmacists; a graduate school; 48 theoretical and clinical subdepartments; a central research laboratory; three special problem laboratories; 11 clinical bases; the P. Stradiņš Museum of Medical History; and museums of anatomy, pathological anatomy, and surgery. Its library contains more than 300,000 holdings.

In the 1974–75 school year the institute had an enrollment of 2,300 students. Its staff included more than 300 lecturers and researchers, including five academicians and corresponding members of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR and the Academy of Sciences of the Latvian SSR, 56 professors and doctors of sciences, and more than 270 docents and candidates of sciences. The institute accepts doctoral and candidate’s dissertations for defense and publishes collections of scientific works. Since its founding the institute has graduated more than 8,500 physicians and pharmacists, 7,500 of them since 1950.