Nil Fedorovich Filatov

Born May 21 (June 2) or, according to some sources, Apr. 4 (16), 1847, in the village of Mikhailovka, in what is now Penza Oblast; died Jan. 26 (Feb. 8), 1902, in Moscow. Russian physician; one of the founders of Russian pediatrics.

In 1869, Filatov graduated from the medical faculty of Moscow University, where he was a student of G. A. Zakhar’in and N. A. Tol’skii. He worked in various hospitals, including the Sophia Children’s Hospital, now the N. F. Filatov Children’s Clinical Hospital. In 1891, Filatov became a professor and head of the first separate subdepartment of children’s diseases at Moscow University.

Filatov developed a combined clinical-physiological approach to pediatrics. He proved (1877) that chicken pox was a distinctive disease. He described (1885) exanthem subitum, or the Filatov-Dukes disease, which he called rubella scarlatinosa, and infectious mononucleosis, or Filatov’s disease. He identified (1895) an early sign of measles (furfuraceous desquamation of the buccal mucosa, the Bel’skii-Filatov-Koplik spots, or Koplik’s spots) and described cardiac failure occurring in the aftermath of scarlet fever. In 1894 he was the first in Russia to use serotherapy in diphtheria. In the book Symptomatology and Diagnosis of Children’s Diseases (1890), Filatov described a new method for examining pediatric patients. Many of Filatov’s works dealt with pediatric neuropathology.

Filatov was head of the pediatric section of the 12th international congress of physicians in Moscow in 1897. He founded the Society of Pediatricians (1892) and a school of pediatrics, whose adherents included V. I. Molchanov and G. N. Speranskii.