Avi Ohry
Tel Aviv, Israel
Dr. Veresaev was born in Tula as Vikenty Vikentyevich Smidowitz in 1867, son of a famous Polish-Catholic physician father and a Russian mother. Raised and educated in Russia, his father established a free-of-charge hospital in Tula. First to introduce sanitary and hygienic principles to the city, his father ironically died in 1894 after contracting typhus from a patient.
It was also his father who convinced him to study medicine, although he first studied philology and history at the University of St. Petersburg. Subsequently he went on to study medicine at Derpt University (Tartu). Vikenty returned to Tula as a physician, but because of his activities and sympathies with the Narodniks he was later forbidden from living in a major city. In Tula, he worked in Dr. Botkin’s hospital for infectious diseases. He wrote novels, memoirs, and biographies. Unlike the surrealistic stories of Bulgakov, his own were realistic. They included biographies of Gogol, Pushkin, and Dostoevsky, and he also translated ancient Greek poetry.
Veresaev, in his original works, dealt with the conflicts of the Russian intelegensia and his impressions as a young doctor. During the Russo-Japanese War, he served as a medical officer and always expressed sympathy for the sufferings of soldiers or the poor, including coal miners and victims of the cholera epidemic. Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Gorky all recommended reading Veresaev’s works. Lenin himself said that he was immensely impressed with his medical descriptions. Lenin had probably heard medical stories from his converted Jewish great-grandfather, Dr. Alexander Blank.
V.V. Veresaev spoke on the harmony between nature and man. He advocated against seclusion of the medical profession and called for the exclusion of charlatanism from true medicine. He died in 1945, and his works are waiting to be re-discovered.1,2 It is interesting to note that I could find only one article (in Russian) that covered his writings.3
References
- V.V. Veresaev’s works, edited by K.N. Leomonova, S.M. Petrova & K.A. Fedin. Moscow: Governmental Literature Print, 1948.
- Veresaev V.V. Zagadochnyi Pushkin. Moscow: Republica, 1996.
- Petrov B.D. V.V. Veresaev—physician author. Ter Arkh (Russian) 1967;39:7-11.
AVI OHRY, MD, is married with two daughters. He is Emeritus Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine at Tel Aviv University, the former director of Rehabilitation Medicine at Reuth Medical and Rehabilitation Center in Tel Aviv, and a member of The Lancet‘s Commission on Medicine & the Holocaust. He conducts award-winning research in neurological rehabilitation, bioethics, medical humanities and history, and on long-term effects of disability and captivity. He plays the drums with a jazz band.