Dobroslavin, Aleksei Petrovich

Born Sept. 29 (Oct. 11), 1842, in the village of Diat’kovo in present-day Briansk Oblast; died Nov. 18 (30), 1889, in St. Petersburg. Russian hygienist and physician; one of the founders of experimental and military hygiene.

In 1865, Dobroslavin graduated from the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy. He worked with M. Pettenkofer. In 1871 at the academy he gave the first course in Russia on hygiene, thereby establishing hygiene as an independent discipline. From 1876 he was professor of the sub-department of hygiene, where he set up an experimental hygiene laboratory. He devoted a great deal of attention to the training in hygiene of military medical personnel. He studied the hygienic problems of the living conditions and food of the peasantry and urban poor, and he analyzed questions of school and municipal hygiene. During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, he took an active part in combating epidemics of dysentery and typhus. He proposed several new designs for disinfection equipment.

Dobroslavin directed the inspection of housing in St. Petersburg and was one of the founding members and an active figure in the Russian Public Health Society. He founded and edited (1874-84) the popular scientific journal Zdorov’e.