The Role of the First People’s Commissar of Health N. A. Semashko in the Formation of Social Hygiene as a Subject of Teaching

Abstract

The article presents an analysis of archival documents and scientific and methodological literature on the organization by the first People’s Commissar of Health of the RSFSR N. A. Semashko since 1922 of teaching the discipline “Social hygiene” to future doctors at domestic universities. The main directions implemented by Nikolai Alexandrovich in this field are: studying the experience of teaching social hygiene abroad and training students in public medicine and public sanitation in pre-revolutionary Russia; formation of the Department of Social Hygiene at the Medical Faculty of the I Moscow State University, which initially trained students of three Moscow universities; substantiation of the role of the new department among other clinical and preventive disciplines; development of educational and methodological documentation and literature on social hygiene together with close associates; organization of interaction of the Department of Social Hygiene with the State Museum of Social Hygiene created on the initiative of the People’s Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR, which was later transformed into the State Institute of Social Hygiene; opening of a clinic of social and occupational diseases at the Department, etc. The results achieved over several years have significantly improved the attitude of the teaching staff of clinical and preventive disciplines to the Department of Social Hygiene and the training of future doctors there, which over a 100-year period of development has been repeatedly renamed and currently bears the name of its creator — the Department of Public Health and Healthcare named after N. A. Semashko Sechenov University. At this department, students of various medical specialties, graduate students, undergraduates and residents in public health and healthcare are still being trained, and the traditions laid down in the training of doctors are carefully preserved and multiplied.