Chistovich, Nikolai

Born Dec. 2 (14), 1860, in St. Petersburg; died Mar. 29,1926, in Leningrad. Soviet internist and microbiologist; specialist on infectious diseases. Academician of the Academy of Military Medicine (1914).

Upon graduation from the Academy of Military Medicine in 1884, Chistovich worked in S. P. Botkin’s clinic. In 1887 he defended his dissertation on experimental cardiology, which he wrote under the direction of I. P. Pavlov. Between 1887 and 1890, Chistovich worked abroad, at the Koch Institute in Berlin and in I. I. Mechnikov’s laboratory in Paris. In 1898 he became a professor in the subdepartment of contagious diseases and bacteriology at the Academy of Military Medicine; in 1910 he was made a professor in the academy’s clinic of internal medicine. From 1900 he occupied the chair of descriptive pathology and treatment of internal diseases at the Women’s Medical Institute (now the First Leningrad Medical Institute).

Chistovich was one of the first in Russia to regard infectious diseases as a scientific discipline and a subject to be taught. His research was on lobar pneumonia, cholera, tuberculosis, and other infectious diseases. He also studied aspects of local immunity, antiphagins, the bacteria carrier state, hematology, and the history of medicine. In 1922, Chistovich wrote the first Soviet textbook of descriptive pathology and treatment of internal diseases. He also founded a clinical school (M. I. Arinkin, S. I. Zlatogorov, S. M. Ryss, N. N. Savitskii).