Famous Botkins in Russian History

                                                              Dr. Sergei Petrovich Botkin

Famous Botkins in Russia

Vasily Petrovich Botkin, a man who was born in both 1811 and 1812, was a writer, critic, and translator. He was an acquaintance of the great critic Belinksy, with whom he carried on a long correspondence, later published. Letters from Spain is Botkin’s most well-known published work. A typical Western liberal, Botkin wanted social change but opposed the idea of violent revolution. In his article on the poet A.A. Fet’s work (1857), he spoke out in favor of “pure art.” He died in 1869. Why was he born in two different years? Because in his day Russia still went by the old Julian calendar, which lagged behind the Gregorian calendar of the West. He was born on December 27, 1811, in Russia, which was January 8, 1812, in Western Europe. Lots of people in Russia were born, or died, in two different years. But nobody was born, or died, in two different millennia. Because in 1918, long before the changing of the millennium that you and I were lucky enough to experience, the Soviets adopted the Gregorian calendar.

 

One of the most famous doctors in Russian history was Sergei Petrovich Botkin (1832-1889). He studied at the medical faculty of Moscow State University (1850-1855); served as field doctor in the Crimean War (1855); wrote his dissertation “On Absorption of Fat in the Bowels” (1860); served as field doctor in the Russo-Turkish War, worked out novel ways to treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield (1877). A specialist in internal diseases, Botkin was one of the first to work out diagnosis and treatment of floating kidney. He played an active role in women’s rights, helped organize medical courses for women in 1872. He was curator of St. Petersburg city hospitals and member of the city Duma, 1881-1889.

 

The Botkin Hospital in Moscow is named after the great physician. In the summer of 1972, I was a patient there. In 1959, Lee Oswald was a patient there.

 

Porfiry Petrovich Goes to Visit Dr. Botkin

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment the examining magistrate Porfiry Petrovich is a hypochondriac. He complains of problems with hemorrhoids, of his “confounded laughter,” which causes him to shake for half an hour at a time; he’s afraid he might have a stroke. He goes to consult with the renowned Dr. Botkin, who spends thirty minutes examining each patient.

 

“He just laughed when he looked at me. He sounded me and listened to my chest. ‘Incidentally,’ he says to me, ‘tobacco is no good for you; your lungs are affected.’”

C and P, Part 6, Chapter 2

And then, of course, there's Vladimir Nabokov's Botkin (Kinbote), lunatic protagonist of the novel Pale Fire.

[excerpted from the book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]

Vasily Petrovich Botkin