Memory. Ivan Sechenov

On August 13, 1829, Ivan Sechenov was born, an outstanding Russian physiologist.

Personal business

Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (1829-1905) was born in the village of Teply Stan of the Simbirsk province (now Sechenovo Nizhny Novgorod Region) in the family of the landowner. Primary education received at home. Parents prepared him for admission to the Kazan gymnasium, but in 1839 his father died, and, on the advice of an older brother, an officer, his mother decided to send her son to a military school. The choice fell on the Main Engineering School (Mikhailovskoye) in St. Petersburg, where Ivan entered in 1843. At the school, Sechenov received serious training in mathematics, physics and chemistry. After the end of the lower classes, he was sent to the service in Kyiv in the second reserve sapper battalion in the rank of second lieutenant.

In Kyiv, Sechenov began to read a lot, think about the profession of a physician, and in the end he turned his life path abruptly. After long and persistent troubles, he resigned and at the beginning of October 1850 he came to Moscow. He entered the University of Moscow first, then a student of the medical faculty and fell into a circle close to the famous professor Granovsky. During his studies, he met Sergey Botkin , friendship with which lasted many years. In 1856, Sechenov was graduated from the University "The degree of the doctor with honors with the provision ... the right to protect the dissertation to receive a diploma for the degree of doctor of medicine." However, before defending the dissertation, the scientist needed to undergo a foreign internship. He did not have money needed for such a trip. The brothers helped out, who allocated six thousand rubles from the inheritance of the mother. As a result, Sechenov was able to go to Germany.

After the return, he prepared the doctoral dissertation “Materials for the future physiology of alcohol intoxication” and defended it in 1860 in the medical and surgical (later Military Medical) Academy in St. Petersburg. At the Academy, Sechenov gave lectures on physiology, organized an excellent physiological laboratory there. In 1871-1876 he headed the Department of Physiology at Novorossiysk University (Odessa). In 1876 he returned to St. Petersburg, where he also organized a laboratory. In 1888 he moved to Moscow, became a Privat -Tocent, and since 1891 - a professor of physiology of Moscow University.

In 1899, Sechenov submits a petition for exemption from mandatory lectures and asks to leave a laboratory and special lectures for him, and after three years he resigned. In “Autobiographical Notes,” he writes: “To end the teaching activity prompted me of summer, the consciousness of the backwardness in science and the belief that the old man should not wait for the time when the audience will wish for his departure.” But even in the future, Sechenov continued to work in the laboratory and give lectures in the Prechista courses.

On November 15, 1905, Ivan Sechenov died of pneumonia. He bequeathed to the peasants of his own warm camp, and the fee for the publication of his labors (after the death of his wife) - the Prechistensky courses bequeathed to the peasants .

What is famous

The creator of the first physiological school in Russia, the founder of the doctrine of mental regulation of behavior. Already in the early 1860s, he came to the conclusion that “the act of nervous excitement is an act by nature of an electric one; The law of excitement in muscle tissue is the same as in the nerve; The act of muscle excitement can be called electric, as well as the process of nervous excitement. ” In the work “Reflexes of the brain” (1866) substantiated the reflex nature of conscious and unconscious activity. He described the inhibition of reflexes to the brain centers (“Addition to the doctrine of nerve centers delaying the reflected movements” 1866). In his article “Elements of Thought” (1878), Sechenov laid the foundations for studying abstract thinking, which are more fully represented in the book of the same name (1903).

Sechenov is the founder of modern molecular physiology, clinical pathophysiology, clinical laboratory diagnostics, psychophysiology, narcology, hematology, neuroendocrinology, neuroimmunology, molecular medicine and biology, proteomics, bioelentology, medical biophysics, medical cybernetics, aviation and cosmic medicine, and cosmic medicine, and cosmic medicine, and cosmic medicine, and cosmic medicine, and cosmic medicine Physiology of labor, age, comparative and evolutionary physiology and biochemistry.

What you need to know about

Sechenov they belong from the first studies in Russia on the physiology of labor. In 1895, he published the work “Physiological criteria for setting the duration of the working day”, where it was scientifically proved that the duration of the working day should not exceed 8 hours. He also wrote a “Essay on the working movements of a person” (1901), “The participation of the senses in the works of the hands of the sight and the blind” (1901), “The participation of the nervous system in the working movements of a person” (1902). In the works of Sechenov in the physiology of labor, the concept of “active rest” was first introduced.

Direct speech

“Do not wake up our society in general to a new boiling activity, maybe Mendeleev and Tsenkovsky would have survived their century in Simferopol and Yaroslavl, the jurist Kovalevsky would be a prosecutor, Junker Beketov was a squadron commander, and Saperer Sephenov would dug trenches according to all the rules of his art” - K. A. Timiryazev, K. A. Timiryazev,

“Hardly any of the modern physiologists ... had such a wide coverage in the field of his own research, starting with physical research in the field of gas dissolution and ending with research in the field of nervous physiology and strictly scientific psychology ... If you add to this a brilliant, remarkably simple, clear form, in which he put on his thoughts, it will become clear that he had even far from Russian science, even far from Russian thought. Outside of his audience and his specialty ” - K. A. Timiryazev

“Soon I began to attend his lectures for students, to whom the assistant was supposed to prepare experiments. My amazement and delight were no limits. And now, after many years, I must say that I have never met a lecturer with such a talent in my life before. He had excellent diction. Especially amazed by the power of logic in his lectures. Sechenov's lectures were obeyed and attended by students very willingly ” - A.F. Samoilov, assistant Sechenov at Moscow University.

Twelve facts about Ivan Sechenov

• Sochenov’s mother Anisya Egorovna was his former serf father.
• During an internship at the University of Berlin, Sechenov found a mistake made in the experiments of the famous French physiologist Claude Bernard . The publication of this work brought fame to the young physiologist among European colleagues. Sechenov had friendly relations with Bernard, later he worked in the Bernard laboratory in Paris.
• In his student years, Sechenov was part of the poetic circle of Apollo Grigoryev, where in addition to literary readings, funny cores took place. Some biographers note that this prompted the young scientist to explore the physiology of intoxication.
• “The reflexes of the brain” were initially intended for publication in the Nekrasov “contemporary” called “attempt to introduce physiological foundations into mental processes”, but did not receive approval of censorship.
• After the first publication of “brain reflexes”, the Minister of the Interior P.A. Valuev ordered to open a case against Sechenov, seeing in his essay the propaganda of "extreme materialism." Sechenov’s friends advised to contact a lawyer, but the scientist said: “Why do I need a lawyer? I will take the frog to the court and do all my experiments to the judges: let the prosecutor then refutes me. ”
• To study the effects of alcohol on blood gases, Sechenov constructed the device - Sechenov pump.
• Sechenov discovered and described the mechanism of muscle feeling (proprioreception), which allows a person even with closed eyes to realize the position of his body. The British scientist Charles Sherrintgon , who also made this discovery, always recognized the priority of Sechenov, but only Sherrington received the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine of 1932, since Sechenov had already died at this moment.
• Sechenov left the Medical and Surgical Academy after the authorities rejected the two candidates he presented: Mechnikov to the post of professor of the department and Golubev to the Department of Histology. The departure of Mechnikov laid the foundation for the “tradition”: the leaders of the Department of Physiology over the next 80 years left the Academy under very different circumstances, but always with resentment.
• Contemporaries considered Sechenov the prototype of Kirsanov in Chernyshevsky’s novel “What to do?” And Bazarov in Turgenev’s novel “Fathers and Children”.
• Sechenov was elected a corresponding member and honorary academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, but did not receive the title of full academician. In the 1860 elections, he himself withdrew his candidacy, in 1868 he was not elected, since the president of the Academy, who had two votes against the charter, and in 1873, the department of physiology voted for the election, but the general meeting did not approve the candidacy.
• Sechechenov’s students were the first two female physiologist in Russia: M. A. Bokova (who became Sechenov’s wife) and N.P. Suslova.
• Sechenov and his wife first translated into Russian the work of Charles Darwin “The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection” and was the largest popularizer of evolutionary teaching in Russia.

Article about Ivan Sechenov on Wikipedia

An article about Ivan Sechenov in the Encyclopedia "Circumspices"

Sechenov biography on the website of the Faculty of Psychology Moscow State University

Works of I.M. Sechenov

A. D. Nozdrachev, V. A. Pastukhov, “The brilliant wave of physiological thought. By the 170th anniversary of the birth of I.M. Sechenov "

Sechenov I.M. "Autobiographical Notes"