Grekov, Ivan

Born Mar. 5 (17), 1867, on the Tomilinka farmstead in Boguchar District. Voronezh Province; died Feb. 11, 1934. in Leningrad. Soviet surgeon; Honored Scientist of the RSFSR (1932).

Grekov graduated from the University of Iur’ev in 1894. From 1895 until the end of his life he worked in the Obukhov Hospital in St. Petersburg, on the basis of which he organized an institute of medicine (1932). In 1915 he became a professor at the Psychoneurological Institute (now the Second Leningrad Medical Institute). His principal works dealt with surgery of the heart, lungs, major vessels, and limbs, as well as with the treatment of wounds and emergency surgery. Grekov was the first in Russia (1909) to introduce a new method for disinfecting the surgical field with tincture of iodine. In 1903 he sutured a heart wound; in 1928 he opened the heart cavity. He was one of the first in Russia to create an artificial esophagus.

Grekov’s best-known work was in abdominal surgery. He developed operations for the sigmoid colon and investigated the link between appendicitis and gastric ulcer, spasm of the ileocecal (Bauhin’s) valve, and ileocecal valvuloplasty. He was closely associated with I. P. Pavlov and drew upon Pavlov’s physiological theories in his own work. In 1920 he was made honorary chairman of the Pirogov Society. In 1922 he resumed publication of the journal Vestnik khirurgii i po-granichnykh oblastei (now the Vestnik khirurgii im. I. I. Grekova).