Medical Statistics in Pre-Reform Russia: Intentions, Degree оf Reliability, Informative Value
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2023.2.802Keywords:
history of sanitary statistics, Russian Empire, incidence, history of the Russian stateAbstract
The authors explain the source peculiarity of medical statistics in Russia between the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries and identify the possibilities and limitations of its use for studying social history and the history of science. The features of the quantitative evidence at that time – them being fragmented, heterogeneous, and expressed in absolute numbers – prompted the authors to turn to the history of the organization of statistical studies in the Russian Empire. The estimation of information value and the discursive nature of health and morbidity statistics were performed based on the analysis of administrative documents (Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov – Complete Collection of Laws, ministerial prescriptions), accounts of medical administrations, uyezd doctors, and medical professors (military-historical and historical archives of Astrakhan, Moscow, Riga, and Vilnius). Based on the presumption that target setting, i. e. the purpose of quantitative indicators, determined the organization of the collection and processing of the data on morbidity, and they, in turn, determined the content of statistical knowledge, the authors reveal the possibilities of the health statistics of the time in question. This approach makes it possible to determine what can and what cannot be judged based on statistical data on health, general and infectious diseases. The authors conclude that medical statistics of that time describe the pathogenicity of landscapes and the state of public healthcare, but not the state of the residents’ health. Medical officials collected data on sick patients, distributed them by disease, and calculated how many lives each disease claimed. Although state doctors were not interested in healthy patients, the enlightened bureaucracy claimed that by doing so, the government was studying and preserving “public health.” The digital indicators collected do not make it possible to scrutinize the citizens’ health of the Russian Empire. But then the changes in the principles of collecting statistical data, their processing, and their use allow researchers to follow the process of the Russian state’s modernization. The participation of doctors in the collection of data on morbidity has two long-term consequences – the formation of aggregated thinking, which included the concept of “public health”, and the growing interest in the daily lives of Russians.
References
Androsov, V. P. (1832). Statisticheskaya zapiska o Moskve [Statistical Note about Moscow]. Moscow, Tipografiya S. Selivanovskogo. 185 p.
Becker, E. M. (2011). Medicine, Law and the State in Imperial Russia. Budapest, N. Y., Central European Univ. Press. 399 p.
Cassedy, H. J. (1984). American Medicine and Statistical Thinking, 1800–1860. Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press. 306 p.
Desrosières, A. (1998). The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning. Cambridge, MA, Harvard Univ. Press. 368 p.
Ermolenko, S. (2023). “Cholera-morbus” v Moskve kak literaturnaya situatsiya [“Cholera Morbus” in Moscow as a Literary Situation]. In Quaestio Rossica. Vol. 11. No. 1, pp. 34–51. DOI 10.15826/qr.2023.1.774.
Hacking, I. (1983). Nineteenth Century Cracks in the Concept of Determinism. In J. of the History of Ideas. Vol. 44. No. 3, pp. 455–475.
IAAO [Astrakhan Region State Historical Archive]. Stock 484. List 1. Dos. 76.
LVIA. F. 388. Ap. 1. B. 1, 4; F. 564. Ap. 1. B. 20, 58, 105; F. 1005. Ap. 1. B. 182.
Markova, M. A. (2019). Ospoprivivanie v Rossii v pervoi chetverti XIX veka po dokumentam Sankt-Peterburgskoi i Moskovskoi gubernii [Smallpox Vaccination in Russia in the First Quarter of the 19th Century according to the Documents of St Petersburg and Moscow Provinces]. In Vestnik arkhivista. No. 4, pp. 1217–1227. DOI 10.28995/2073-0101-2019-4-1217-1227.
Merkov, A. M. (Ed.). (1966). Ocherki istorii otechestvennoi sanitarnoi statistiki [Essays on the History of Russian Sanitary Statistics]. Moscow, Meditsina. 288 p.
Nakaz chinam i sluzhitelyam zemskoi politsii, 3 iyunya 1837 goda [Order to the Ranks and Servants of the Zemstvo Police, June 3, 1837]. (N. d.). In PSZ. Coll. 2. Vol. 12. No. 10306.
Novosel’sky, S. A. (1955). Predmet i soderzhanie otechestvennoi sanitarnoi statistiki v dosovetskii period ee razvitiya [Subject and Content of Russian Sanitary Statistics in the Pre-Soviet Period of Its Development]. In Uchenye zapiski Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta ekonomiki, statistiki i informatiki. Vol. 6. Trudy kafedry demografii. Moscow, S. n., pp. 7–43.
O dostavlenii v S.-Peterburge fizikatu, v Moskve – meditsinskoi kontore, a v drugikh mestakh vrachebnym upravam vedomostei o chisle bol’nykh, 22 iyulya 1842 goda [On the Delivery to the Physician’s Office in St Petersburg, to the Medical Office in Moscow, and to Medical Boards in Other Places of Statements on the Number of Patients, July 22, 1842]. (N. d.). In PSZ. Coll. 2. Vol. 17. No. 15880.
Ob osobennykh merakh k okhraneniyu zdraviya narodnogo v sluchae poval’nykh boleznei [On Special Measures for the Protection of Public Health in the Event of Epidemic Diseases]. (1832). In Svod zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii. Vol. 13. Ustavy blagochiniya. St Petersburg, S. n., columns 381–437.
Ogryzko, E. V. (2011). Sostoyanie i osnovnye napravleniya reformirovaniya meditsinskoi statistiki v Rossiiskoi Federatsii [State and Main Directions of Medical Statistics Reform in the Russian Federation]. Dis. … dokt. med. nauk. Moscow, S. n. 515 p.
Porter, Th. (1986). The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900. Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press. 348 p.
Ptukha, M. V. (1945). Ocherki po istorii statistiki XVII–XVIII vekov [Essays on the History of Statistics of the 17th–18th Centuries]. Moscow, Gospolitizdat. 352 p.
Rafalovich, A. A. (1845). Dvizhenie narodonaseleniya i obshchestvennoe zdorov’e v Odesse v 1843 godu [Population Movement and Public Health in Odessa in 1843]. In Novorossiiskii kalendar’ na 1845 god. Odessa, Gorodskaya tipografiya, pp. 323–340.
RGIA [Russian State Historical Archive]. Stock 1299. List 1. Dos. 1181; List 13. Dos. 1184; List 17. Dos. 125; Stock 1294. List 10, 3. Dos. 47.
RGVIA [Russian State Military History Archive]. Stock 879. List 1. Dos. 2, 15; List 2. Dos. 662.
Sambuk, D. (2015) Wächter der Gesundheit. Staat und lokale Gesellschaften beim Aufbau des Medizinalwesens im Russischen Reich 1762–1831. Köln, Böhlau. 464 S.
Sel‘skii politseiskii ustav dlya gosudarstvennykh krest‘yan [Rural Police Charter for State Peasants]. (N. d.). In PSZ. Coll. 2. Vol. 14. No. 12165.
Shevchenko, Yu. L., Pokrovsky, V. I., Shchepin, O. P. (Eds.). (2001). Zdravookhranenie Rossii. XX vek [Healthcare in Russia. 20th Century]. Moscow, GEOTAR-Med. 204 p.
Sobol’shchikov, P. I. (1852). Obshchestvennoe zdorov’e v Tiflise [Public Health in Tiflis]. In Kavkazskii kalendar’ na 1852. Tiflis, S. n., p. 519.
Statisticheskie svedeniya o S.-Peterburge [Statistic Information about St Petersburg]. (1836). St Petersburg, S. n. 291 p.
Stigler, S. M. (1986). The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900. Cambridge, Belknap Press. 432 p.
Stochik, A. M., Pal’tsev, M. A., Zatravkin, S. N. (2004). Moskovskii universitet v reforme vysshego meditsinskogo obrazovaniya 40–60-kh godov XIX veka [Moscow University in the Reform of Higher Medical Education in the 1840s–1860s]. Moscow, Shiko. 288 p.
Uchrezhdeniya dlya upravleniya gubernii vserossiiskoi imperii, 7 noyabrya 1775 [Institutions for the Management of the Provinces of the All-Russian Empire, November 7, 1775]. (N. d.). In PSZ. Coll. 1. Vol. 20. No. 14392.
Vasil’ev, K. G., Segal, L. E. (1960). Istoriya epidemii v Rossii (materialy i ocherki) [History of Epidemics in Russia (Materials and Essays)]. Moscow, Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo meditsinskoi literatury, 1960. 398 p.
Vishlenkova, E. A. (2011). “Vypolnyaya vrachebnye obyazannosti, ya postig dukh narodnyi”: samosoznanie vracha kak prosvetitelya rossiiskogo gosudarstva (pervaya polovina XIX veka) [ “Carrying Out My Medical Responsibilities, I Have Grasped the Popular Spirit:” The Self-Identification of the Physician as an Enlightener of the Russian State (First Half of the Nineteenth Century)]. In Ab Imperio. No. 2, pp. 47–82.
Vishlenkova, E. A., Gatina, Z. S. (2015). “Izlozhit’ predmet stsientificheski”: russkie vrachi i ikh polevye issledovaniya (pervaya polovina XIX veka) [“Presenting the Subject in a Scientific Way”: Russian Doctors and Their Field Research (First Half of the 19th Century)]. In Rossiiskaya istoriya. No. 3, pp. 154–169.
Vishlenkova, E. A., Il’ina, K. A. (2017). Nauka upravlyat’: gospodstvo cherez znanie i reforma upravleniya rossiiskim obrazovaniem v pervoi polovine XIX veka [The Science of Rulership: Domination through Knowledge and the Administrative Reform of Russian Education in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century]. In Ab Imperio. No. 2, pp. 65–107.
Willford, I. K. (1918). The History of Statistics, Their Development and Progress in Many Countries. N. Y., Macmillan Co. 798 p.
Yakovenko, V. A., Vishlenkova, E. A., Lisitsyna, E. A. (2021). Meditsinskie obshchestva [Medical Societies]. In Vishlenkova, E. A., Renner, A. (Eds.). Istoriya meditsiny i meditsinskoi geografii v Rossiiskoi imperii. Moscow, Shiko, pp. 112–138.
