Georgii Lang

Born July 16 (28), 1875, in St. Petersburg; died July 24, 1948, in Leningrad. Soviet internist. Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR (1945).

Lang graduated from the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy in 1899. In 1919 he became a professor at the Petro-grad Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians. In 1922 he was appointed head of the general-medicine technique presentation clinic of the First Leningrad Medical Institute. From 1928 to 1930 he was rector of the institute.

Lang’s scientific legacy and that of his followers embrace almost all aspects of the clinical treatment of internal diseases (pulmonology, hepatology, and so forth). Lang was at the forefront of the functional school of Soviet hematology. His principal works, however, were devoted to cardiology. He worked out a generally accepted classification and nomenclature for diseases of the cardiovascular system; he introduced the concept of reversible disturbances of the biochemistry of the heart muscle (myocardial dystrophy); he pointed out the presence of intermediate forms between stenocardia (angina pectoris) and myocardial infarction; and he introduced the quinidine treatment of cardiac fibrillation in the USSR. His priority was the study of hypertension as a neurosis of the higher centers of regulation of vascular tonus, and he proposed a prophylactic system of measures against the condition.

Lang influenced a major following of internists, and in 1943 he was made chairman of the All-Union Society of Internists. Lang was the founder (together with M. P. Konchalovskii) and editor of the journal Terapevticheskii arkhiv and editor of the journal Klinicheskaia meditsina. He was awarded the State Prize of the USSR posthumously in 1951.