The main contribution to the development of bacteriological research in Russia was made by Prince Alexander Petrovich Oldenburgsky, at that time acting as chairman of the Imperially approved commission on measures to prevent and combat plague infection. Initial work on the topic was going on in St. Petersburg on the basis of the veterinary laboratory of the Imperial Institute of Experimental Medicine (IIEM).
In general, interest in the direction appeared after the famous research of Robert Koch, who by the beginning of the 90s of the 19th century had developed very effective methods and techniques for working with bacteria in laboratory conditions. The outbreaks of pneumonic plague in the village of Vetlyanskaya in 1878, in the Tajik village of Anzob in 1899 and in the Talovsky district of the Inner Kyrgyz Horde among the local population in 1900 also added relevance.
The Plague Commission, or Komochum, eventually moved to Fort Alexander 1 near Kronstadt, which had a much higher level of biological safety.
The full official name of the island biological laboratory sounded like this: "A special laboratory of the Imperial Institute of Experimental Medicine for the preparation of anti-plague drugs in Fort Alexander I".
Although the fort was withdrawn from the military department and from the defensive structures, many employees wore uniforms. It is worth noting that even by modern standards, microbiological scientists and engineers prepared the fort very well for working with pathogens of plague, smallpox and cholera: all effluents were thoroughly disinfected by boiling at 120 degrees. The working premises of the fort were divided into two divisions: infectious and non-infectious. Monkeys, horses, rabbits, rats, guinea pigs and even reindeer were used as experimental animals. But the key experimental work was carried out with horses, of which there were up to 16 individuals in the stables. There was even a special elevator for animals, on which they were lowered into the courtyard for a walk. In the infectious ward, after the death of the experimental animals, everything from corpses to manure was burned in a cremation oven. A special steamer with the iconic name "Microbe" cruised between the land and the fort. In total, several tens of millions of vials of serum and vaccines against streptococcal infection, tetanus, scarlet fever, staphylococcus, typhus, plague and cholera were produced in the laboratories of Fort Alexander I during a quarter of a century of work.
A key research topic at the fort was modeling the mechanisms of infection during outbreaks of pneumonic plague. However, the world and domestic science took its first steps in modeling such complex and dangerous processes, so it could not do without tragedies. In 1904, Vladislav Ivanovich Turchinovich-Vyzhnikevich, the head of the "plague" laboratory, died. In his book, Candidate of Biological Sciences Supotnitskiy Mikhail Vasilyevich (deputy editor-in-chief of the journal "Bulletin of the NBC Defense Troops") cites the conclusions of a special commission that examined the reasons for the death of the scientist: “Vladislav Ivanovich Turchinovich-Vyzhnikevich was engaged in experiments on infecting animals pulverized cultures and participated in the preparation of the plague toxin by rubbing the bodies of plague microbes frozen with liquid air. "As a result, the plague pathogens entered the scientist's respiratory tract and caused a severe course of the disease with a fatal outcome. The second victim of pneumonic plague infection was Doctor Manuil Fedorovich Schreiber, who suffered three long days before his death in February 1907.
Doctor Manuil Fedorovich Schreiber, who died of plague pneumonia in the "Alexander I" fort
A crematorium for the incineration of plague corpses. Fort "Alexander I"
In 1905, V. I. Gos took over the research baton of aerosol infection with plague, who tried to use "dry plague dust" for this. An employee of the "Special Laboratory" has developed a special device for infecting guinea pigs with a special fine aerosol of the plague pathogen. In total, the fact is that when the plague pathogens were applied to the mucous membranes of the nose, the pigs did not become infected, so the aerosol particles with bacteria had to be reduced. In the device, the delivery of pathogens to the deep parts of the respiratory system of experimental animals was carried out using fine spray of plague broth culture. The dispersion could be varied - for this, the State provided a regulator for the air pressure supplied to the spray nozzle. As a result, the plague pathogens fell directly into the alveoli of the lungs, causing severe inflammation and then infection.
The data obtained by Gosom on the infection of animals showed the complete impossibility of infecting humans in this way in natural conditions. This was confirmed by the outbreak of plague in Manchuria three years after the publication of the Gos report. After the autopsy of 70 corpses, it turned out that the pneumonic form of plague develops not from the alveoli, but from the tonsils, mucous membrane of the trachea and bronchi. At the same time, the plague did not penetrate into the lungs directly, but through the bloodstream. As a result, the conclusions of Gos turned out to be incorrect at that time, since they could not explain the mechanism of the spread of the plague during the outbreak in Manchuria, and the achievements of the scientist from Fort Alexander I were forgotten. The contagious model of infection, based on the principle of "touched - got sick", prevailed in those days, and the progressive ideas of the Russian scientist were out of work.
However, Gos's ideas on the use of a fine aerosol of the pathogen will return much later - at the end of the 40s of the XX century. And this will be a work that is not at all from the category of humanistic. Scientific developments of the Russian fort "Alexander I" will form the basis of inhalation human infection in the development of biological weapons.
