“Without Ivanov Mikhailovich with their sense of dignity and duty, every state is doomed to perish from within, in spite of any Dneprostroi and Volkhovstroi. Because the state should not consist of machines, not of bees and ants, but of representatives of the highest species of the animal kingdom, Homo sapiens."
The first Russian Nobel laureate, academician I. P. Pavlov.
Ivan Sechenov was born on August 13, 1829 in a noble family in the village of Teply Stan, lying in the Simbirsk province (today the village of Sechenovo in the Nizhny Novgorod region). His father's name was Mikhail Alekseevich, and he was a military man. Sechenov Sr. served in the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment and retired with the rank of Major Seconds. Ivan's mother, Anisya Yegorovna, was an ordinary peasant woman, freed from serfdom after she married her master. In his memoirs, Sechenov wrote with love: “My smart, kind, sweet mother was beautiful in her youth, although according to legend there was an admixture of Kalmyk blood in her blood. Of all the children, I became black relatives of my mother and from her I acquired that guise, thanks to which Mechnikov, who returned from a trip to the Nogai steppe, told me that in these Palestinians, every Tatar is a spitting image of Sechenov …"
The village of Teply Stan, in which Vanya spent his childhood, belonged to two landowners - the western part of it was the property of Pyotr Filatov, and the eastern part was owned by Mikhail Alekseevich. The Sechenovs had a solid two-story house in which the whole large family lived - Ivan had four brothers and three sisters. The head of the family barely supported his children - he did not have capital, and the income from the estate was small. Despite this, Mikhail Alekseevich perfectly understood the importance of education and considered it his duty to give it to his children. However, when the time came to send Ivan to the Kazan gymnasium already assigned to him, Sechenov Sr. died. After the death of his father, Vanya had to say goodbye to thoughts of gymnasium. At the same time, his older brother returned to the village from Moscow. It was he who told mother that education in St. people studied engineering and mathematical sciences in detail), and the profession of a military engineer is considered prestigious. This story made a proper impression on Anisya Yegorovna, and soon Vanya was sent to the northern capital.
In mid-August 1843, Ivan Mikhailovich was admitted to the Main Military Engineering School, where other famous Russian people also studied - the hero of Sevastopol, General Eduard Totleben, writers Fyodor Dostoevsky and Dmitry Grigorovich. After studying in the lower classes for five years, Sechenov failed the exams in the art of building and fortification, and therefore, instead of being transferred to the officer class in June 1848 with the rank of ensign, he was sent to serve in the second sapper battalion, stationed in the city of Kiev. The military service could not satisfy Sechenov's inquisitive nature, and after serving in the sapper battalion for less than two years, Ivan Mikhailovich decided to resign. In January 1850, with the rank of second lieutenant, he resigned from military service, and already in October he enrolled in the medical faculty of Moscow University as a volunteer.
The order in the capital's university at that time was incredibly strict. For a student, going out into the street without a sword or wearing a cap instead of a cocked hat was considered a grave offense. In addition to his superiors, it was required to salute all the military generals he met. "Disorder" in the uniform was also severely punished. For this, by the way, the later well-known doctor Sergei Botkin suffered - for the collar of his uniform that was not fastened on hooks, he was put in a cold punishment cell for a day. Ivan Mikhailovich himself in his student years lived extremely modestly, renting tiny rooms. The money that his mother sent him was barely enough for food, and besides, it was still necessary to pay money for tuition. The first lecture Ivan Mikhailovich listened to at the university was on anatomy. The gray-haired professor read it in Latin, which Sechenov did not know at that moment, however, thanks to diligence and his outstanding abilities, he quickly learned it. In general, a diligent and thoughtful student, Sechenov studied very diligently at first. In his own words, in his junior years, he dreamed of devoting himself to comparative anatomy. This discipline was taught by the famous professor Ivan Glebov. Sechenov liked his lectures, and he willingly attended the classes of Ivan Timofeevich.
After several years of training, Ivan Mikhailovich began to study therapy and general pathology, which was read by Professor Alexei Polunin - the then medical luminary, the founder of the country's first department of pathological anatomy. However, having familiarized himself with the main medical subjects, the young man suddenly became disillusioned with medicine. Subsequently, he wrote: “The fault of my medicine's betrayal was that I did not find in it what I expected - naked empiricism instead of theories … There is nothing but a listing of the symptoms of the disease and the causes of the disease, methods of treatment and its outcomes. And there is no information about how the disease develops from the reasons, what is its essence and why this or that medicine helps … The diseases themselves did not give rise to the slightest interest in me, since there were no keys to understanding their meaning …”. For explanations, Sechenov turned to Alexei Polunin, who answered him like this: “Dear sir, would you like to jump above your head? are obtained in a practical way. You will treat, you will be wrong. And when you pass this complex science with your sick, then you can be called a doctor."
It is possible that Ivan Mikhailovich would have left medicine as easily as he said goodbye to military service, had he not met the outstanding surgeon Fyodor Inozemtsev. The professor's passion for the role of the sympathetic nervous system in the development of many diseases, his amazing foresight of the importance of the nervous system in the study of diseases aroused great interest in the young man. On the basis of the works of Fyodor Ivanovich, Sechenov's first scientific article "Can nerves influence nutrition" appeared.
In 1855, when Ivan Mikhailovich had already entered the fourth year, his mother unexpectedly died. After the death of Anisya Yegorovna, the sons divided the inheritance. Sechenov immediately renounced his rights to the estate and asked for money. His share accounted for several thousand rubles, and the only "property" that Ivan Mikhailovich received into his property was the serf Feofan, for whom the future scientist immediately procured his freedom.
Sechenov graduated from the course of study at the capital's university among the three most capable students and was forced to take not standard medicinal, but much more complex, doctoral final exams. After their defense in June 1856, he received a certificate of approval in the degree of doctor "with the granting of the right to defend a dissertation to receive a diploma of doctor of medicine." After passing the exams, Ivan Mikhailovich himself was finally convinced that medicine was not his vocation, choosing physiology as a new direction of his activity. Since this young science was at a higher level abroad, Ivan Mikhailovich decided to leave his homeland for a while.
Sechenov decided to start his studies with chemistry and chose the city of Berlin as his first stop. The laboratory of medicinal chemistry there was headed by a young and talented scientist Felix Hoppe-Seiler. Together with him, Sechenov studied the chemical composition of fluids entering the bodies of animals. During this internship, he discovered a significant error in the works of the famous French physiologist Claude Bernard. The publication of data on this brought fame to the young physiologist among his European colleagues.
Even in his student years, the young Sechenov was a permanent member of the literary circle of Apollo Grigoriev. In addition to poetry readings, this circle was famous for its unbridled revelry, in which the "father of Russian physiology" took an active part. For Ivan Mikhailovich, in the end, participation in these drinking parties was not in vain - while already in Berlin, he had a plan to study the effect of alcohol poisoning on the human body. Scientific coverage of acute alcohol poisoning later became the basis of his doctoral dissertation. All research Sechenov carried out in two versions - with alcohol consumption and under normal conditions. The young scientist studied the effect of alcoholic beverages on the nerves and muscles on animals (in particular, frogs) and on himself.
In the winter of 1856, Ivan Mikhailovich listened to the German physiologist Emile Dubois-Reymond a series of lectures on electrophysiology, a new field of research that studies physiological processes by changing the electrical potentials that arise in the tissues and organs of the body. The audience of this prominent scientist was small, only seven people, and among them a couple of Russians - Botkin and Sechenov. In addition, during a year in Berlin, Ivan Mikhailovich listened to lectures by Rosa on analytical chemistry, Johannes Müller - on comparative anatomy, Magnus - on physics. And in the spring of 1858 Sechenov left for Vienna and got a job with the famous physiologist of those years - Professor Karl Ludwig, known for his work on blood circulation. According to Sechenov, Ludwig was "an international luminary of physiology for young scientists from all over the world, which was promoted by his pedagogical skills and wealth of knowledge." In his laboratory, the Russian scientist continued his research on the effect of alcohol on blood circulation. Throughout the summer of 1858, Ivan Mikhailovich was only engaged in pumping gases out of the blood. However, all the methods used by scientists at that time were unsatisfactory, and after a long search and reflection, the twenty-nine-year-old Russian scientist succeeded in constructing a new absorptiometer, which remained in history under the name of the Sechenov pump.
The next point of study for Ivan Mikhailovich was the University of Heidelberg, where professors Hermann Helmholtz and Robert Bunsen, who were popular in Europe, taught. In the Helmholtz laboratory, Sechenov conducted four important scientific studies - the effect of irritation of the vagus nerve on the heart, the study of the rate of contraction of the frog's muscles, the study of physiological optics, and the study of gases contained in milk. And chemist Bunsen Sechenov attended a course in inorganic chemistry. An interesting recollection left by Ivan Mikhailovich about his new teacher: “Bunsen read lectures excellently and had the habit of sniffing in front of an audience all the odorous substances described, no matter how bad and harmful the odors were. There were stories that one day he sniffed something until he fainted. For his weakness for explosives, he long ago paid with an eye, but in his lectures he made explosions at every opportunity, and then solemnly showed the remnants of the last compound on the pierced bottom … Bunsen was everyone's favorite, and young people called him "Papa Bunsen", despite that he was not yet an old man."
Having visited Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig and Heidelberg, Ivan Mikhailovich completely fulfilled the program, which he had compiled for himself with the aim of a comprehensive and deep mastering of experimental physiology. The result of these works was the completion of work on a doctoral dissertation, which was sent to St. Petersburg to the Medical-Surgical Academy, where it was to be defended. This work, modestly named by the author as "Materials for the Physiology of Alcohol Poisoning", stood out for its deep scientific insight into the essence of the topic, richness of experimental data and breadth of coverage of the problem. In February 1860 Sechenov's dissertation was published in the Military Medical Journal.
On a February evening in 1860, Ivan Mikhailovich arrived at his homeland in a mail coach. In early March, he successfully defended his dissertation and became a doctor of medicine. At the same time, the council of the Medical-Surgical Academy allowed him to take exams for the right to acquire the title of adjunct professor. Having passed these exams, Sechenov received an offer to teach physiology classes, and a couple of weeks later gave his first lecture. Already the first speeches of the thirty-year-old professor attracted general interest. His reports were distinguished not only by the clarity and simplicity of presentation, but also by the richness of the facts, as well as the unusual content. One of his assistants wrote: “And now, many years later, I must say that never in my life, either before or later, have I met a lecturer with such a talent. He had excellent diction, but the power of logic in his reasoning was especially shocking … . In mid-April, Ivan Mikhailovich was enrolled as an adjunct professor at the Department of Physiology, and in March 1861 he was unanimously elected by the conference of the Medical-Surgical Academy as an extraordinary professor (that is, not occupying a department or supernumerary).
In September 1861 in the "Medical Bulletin" were published public lectures of the scientist "On plant acts in the life of an animal." In them, Sechenov was the first to formulate the concept of the relationship between organisms and the environment. And in the summer of next year, Ivan Mikhailovich again went abroad for a year and worked in the Paris laboratory of the famous Claude Bernard, the founder of endocrinology. There he was able to discover the nervous mechanisms of "central (or Sechenov's) inhibition." This work, highly appreciated by Claude Bernard, Ivan Mikhailovich later dedicated to the German researcher Karl Ludwig with the words: "To his highly respected teacher and friend." He also did not stop improving his education - on the same trip, Sechenov managed to take a course in thermometry at the famous College de France.
In the fall of 1861, the scientist met Maria Bokova and her friend Nadezhda Suslova. Young women passionately wanted to become certified doctors, but they could not get into the university - in Russia at that time the path to higher education for the fairer sex was closed. Then Suslova and Bokova, despite the difficulties, decided to attend lectures at the Medical-Surgical Academy as volunteers. Ivan Mikhailovich eagerly helped them in the study of medicine. At the end of the academic year, he offered his students various topics for scientific research, later Maria Alexandrovna and Nadezhda Prokofievna not only wrote their doctoral dissertations, but also successfully defended them in Zurich. Nadezhda Suslova became the first Russian woman doctor, and Maria Bokova became Sechenov's wife and his irreplaceable assistant in scientific research.
In May 1863 Ivan Mikhailovich returned to St. Petersburg and published his last works in print - essays on "animal" electricity. These works by Sechenov made a lot of noise, and in mid-June the Academy of Sciences awarded him the Demidov Prize. Ivan Mikhailovich himself spent the whole summer writing his famous scientific work entitled "Reflexes of the Brain", which Academician Pavlov dubbed "the genius wave of Sechenov's thought." In this work, the scientist convincingly proved for the first time that the entire mental life of people, all their behavior is firmly connected with external stimuli, "and not with some mysterious soul." Any irritation, according to Sechenov, causes one or another response of the nervous system - a reflex in a different way. Ivan Mikhailovich experimentally showed that if a dog's eyesight, hearing and smell are “turned off”, he will sleep all the time, because no stimulus signals will come to his brain from the outside world.
This work of the scientist tore off the veil of mystery that surrounded the mental life of a person. Joy, sadness, ridicule, passion, animation - all these phenomena of the life of the brain, according to Sechenov, were expressed as a result of less or more relaxation or shortening of a certain muscle group - a purely mechanical act. Of course, such conclusions generated a storm of protest in society. A certain censor Veselovsky noted in a memorandum that Sechenov's works "undermine the political and moral principles, as well as the religious beliefs of people." Privy Councilor Przhetslavsky (by the way, the second censor of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) accused Ivan Mikhailovich of dethroning "all moral social foundations and destroying the religious dogmas of future life" by reducing a person "to the state of a pure machine." Already at the beginning of October 1863, the Minister of the Interior forbade the publication in the Sovremennik magazine of the scientist's work entitled Attempts to Introduce Physiological Principles into Mental Processes. However, this work under the changed title "Reflexes of the Brain" was published in the "Medical Bulletin".
In April 1864, Sechenov was approved as an ordinary professor of physiology, and two years later, Ivan Mikhailovich decided to publish the main work of his life as a separate book. On this occasion, the Minister of Internal Affairs Pyotr Valuev informed Prince Urusov, the head of the Ministry of Justice:, recognizing only one matter in a person. I recognize Sechenov's work as an undeniably harmful direction. " The circulation of the book was under arrest, and the scientist's materialistic views caused a new wave of persecution by the authorities. Sechenov greeted the news of the initiation of a lawsuit against him extremely calmly. To all offers of friends for help in finding a good lawyer, Ivan Mikhailovich answered: “And why do I need him? I will bring an ordinary frog with me to the court and do all my experiments before the judges - let the prosecutor then refute me. " Fearing disgrace not only before the entire Russian society, but also before the learned Europe, the government decided to abandon the lawsuit and, reluctantly, allowed the publication of the book "Reflexes of the Brain". At the end of August 1867, the arrest was removed from its publication, and Sechenov's work was published. However, the great physiologist - the pride and beauty of Russia - remained "politically unreliable" for the entire life of the tsarist government.
In 1867-1868, Ivan Mikhailovich worked in the Austrian town of Graz, in the scientific laboratory of his friend Alexander Rollet. There he discovered the phenomena of trace and summation in the nerve centers of living organisms and wrote a work "On the chemical and electrical irritation of the spinal nerves of frogs."In the Russian Academy of Sciences at that time, there was not a single Russian name in the category of natural science, and at the end of 1869 Ivan Mikhailovich was elected a corresponding member of this scientific institution. And in December 1870 Sechenov voluntarily left the Medico-Surgical Academy. He committed this act as a protest against the blackout of his close friend Ilya Mechnikov, who was nominated for professor. Sechenov's departure marked the beginning of a whole "tradition" - over the next eighty years, the heads of the Department of Physiology left the Academy under various circumstances, but always with resentment.
After leaving the department, Sechenov remained unemployed for some time, until his old friend and colleague Dmitry Mendeleev invited him to work in his laboratory. Sechenov accepted the offer and took up the chemistry of solutions, while giving lectures at the artists' club. In March 1871 he received an invitation from Novorossiysk University and until 1876 worked in Odessa as a professor of physiology. During these years, Ivan Mikhailovich, without ceasing to study the physiology of the nervous system, made major discoveries in the field of absorption from tissues and release of carbon dioxide by blood. Also during these years, Ivan Mikhailovich discovered the mechanism of muscular feeling (otherwise, proprioception), which allows people, even with their eyes closed, to be aware of the position of their bodies. The English scientist Charles Sherrington, who made such a discovery, always recognized the priority of Ivan Mikhailovich, but only he received the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1932, since Sechenov had already died by that time.
In the eighties of the nineteenth century, the name of Sechenov was no less popular in the scientific world than in the literary world - the name of Chernyshevsky. However, it was no less "popular" at the top of the government. In November 1873, according to the proposal of six academicians, Ivan Mikhailovich ran for an adjunct in physiology at the Academy of Sciences. The huge list of discoveries and works of the scientist was so impressive, and the academics who nominated him were so authoritative that at the meeting of the department he was elected by 14 votes to 7. However, a month later the general meeting of the Academy of Sciences took place, and Ivan Mikhailovich missed two votes - these two votes were the privilege of the president Academy. This is how the doors of this institution closed for the great Russian scientist, just as they closed for Stoletov, Mendeleev, Lebedev, Timiryazev, Mechnikov - world-famous scientists, the best representatives of Russian science. There was nothing surprising, by the way, in the non-election of Ivan Mikhailovich. From the point of view of most academicians, the physiologist who wrote "Reflexes of the Brain", propagandizing right and left "English revolutionary Darwin", seditious and materialist could not count on being in the circle of "immortals".
In the spring of 1876, Sechenov returned to the city on the Neva and took the place of professor of the Department of Physiology, Histology and Anatomy of the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University. In this place in 1888, the scientist organized a separate laboratory of physiology. Along with work at the university, Sechenov lectured at the Bestuzhev Higher Courses for Women - one of the founders of which he was. In a new place, Ivan Mikhailovich, as always, launched advanced physiological research. By that time, in general terms, he had already completed work concerning the physicochemical laws of the distribution of gases in artificial salt solutions and blood, and in 1889 he managed to derive the "Sechenov equation" - an empirical formula linking the solubility of a gas in an electrolytic solution with its concentration and which laid the foundation for the study of human gas exchange.
It should be noted that Ivan Mikhailovich, being an unusually versatile person, was interested in all aspects of social and scientific life. Among his closest acquaintances were such famous personalities as Ivan Turgenev, Vasily Klyuchevsky and Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is curious that contemporaries considered Ivan Mikhailovich the prototype of Bazarov in the novel "Fathers and Sons" and Kirsanov in the novel "What is to be done?" A friend and disciple of Sechenov, Kliment Timiryazev, wrote about him: “Hardly any modern physiologist has such a wide scope in the field of his research, starting with research in the field of gas dissolution and ending with research in the field of nervous physiology and strictly scientific psychology … If we add that wonderful the simple form in which he puts on his ideas, it will become clear the enormous influence that Sechenov had on Russian thought, on Russian science far beyond the bounds of his specialty and his audience. " By the way, as a scientist, Ivan Mikhailovich was unusually lucky. Each new work always endowed him with a significant and important discovery, and the physiologist with a generous hand put these gifts into the treasury of world science. Sechenov, who received an excellent physical, mathematical and engineering education, effectively applied knowledge in his scientific activities, using, among other things, such approaches, which were later called cybernetics. In addition, the scientist prepared (although not published) a course in higher mathematics. According to Academician Krylov, "of all biologists, only Helmholtz (by the way, a great physicist) knew mathematics no worse than Sechenov."
Despite all the merits of the scientist, the authorities put up with him with difficulty, and in 1889 Ivan Mikhailovich was forced to leave St. Petersburg. The physiologist himself said with irony: "I decided to change my professorship to a more modest privat-docent in Moscow." However, even there, the scientist continued to put obstacles and interfere with doing what he loved. Ivan Mikhailovich could not give up his research work, and Karl Ludwig, who perfectly understood everything - at that moment a professor at the University of Leipzig - wrote to his student that while he was alive, there would always be a place for a Russian friend in his laboratory. Thus, in the laboratory of Ludwig Sechenov, he set up experiments and was engaged in physiological research, and in Moscow he only gave lectures. In addition, the scientist taught courses for women at the Society of Teachers and Educators. This continued until 1891, when the professor of the Department of Physiology Sheremetevsky died, and a vacancy appeared at Moscow University. By that time, Ivan Mikhailovich had completely completed his studies on the theory of solutions, which, by the way, were highly appreciated in the scientific world and were confirmed by chemists in the coming years. After that, Sechenov took up gas exchange, constructing a number of original devices and developing his own methods for studying the exchange of gases between tissues and blood and between the environment and the body. Admitting that "studying breathing on the go" had always been his impossible task, Sechenov began to study the dynamics of gas exchange in the human body. In addition, he, as in the old days, paid great attention to neuromuscular physiology, having published a generalizing major work "Physiology of the nerve centers."
In everyday life, the famous physiologist was a modest man, content with very little. Even his closest friends did not know that Sechenov had such high awards as the Order of St. Stanislav of the first degree, the Order of St. Vladimir of the third degree, the Order of St. Anna of the third degree. Together with his wife, in his free time from work, he translated Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man into Russian and was a popularizer of evolutionary doctrine in our country. It is also worth noting that the scientist was opposed to any experiments on living people. If, while working, he needed to conduct experiments on the human body, then Ivan Mikhailovich checked everything only on himself. To do this, he, a lover of rare wines, had to not only swallow undiluted alcohol, but once drink a flask with tubercle bacilli in order to prove that only a weakened organism is susceptible to this infection. This direction, by the way, was later developed by his student Ilya Mechnikov. In addition, Sechenov did not recognize serfdom and, before his death, sent the peasants of his estate Tyoply Stan six thousand rubles - exactly this amount, according to his calculations, he spent on his education at the expense of his mother's serfs.
In December 1901, at the age of 72, Ivan Mikhailovich left teaching at Moscow University and retired. After leaving the service, Sechenov's life went on in a quiet and peaceful course. He continued to conduct experimental work, and in 1903-1904 he even took up teaching activities for workers (Prechistinsky courses), but the authorities quickly imposed a ban on this. He lived with Maria Alexandrovna (with whom he had sealed his union with the sacrament of a wedding back in 1888) in Moscow in a clean and comfortable apartment. He had a small circle of acquaintances and friends who gathered at his place for musical and card nights. Meanwhile, the Russian-Japanese war broke out in the country - Port Arthur was surrendered, the tsarist army was defeated near Mukden, and the fleet sent to help from the Baltic Sea was almost all killed in the battle at Tsushima. These days, Ivan Mikhailovich wrote in his memoirs: "… It's a misfortune to be an old man worthless for anything in such a difficult time - to suffer with anxious expectations and wring useless hands …". However, the scientist's hands were not useless. Soon after the tsarist officials forbade him to work at the Prechistenskiye courses, Ivan Mikhailovich prepared his next work for publication, combining all the studies on the absorption of carbonic acid by saline solutions. And then the scientist began new research on the physiology of labor. Back in 1895, he published such a unique article for that time as "Criteria for setting the length of the working day", where he scientifically proved that the length of the working day should not be more than eight hours. Also in this work, the concept of "active rest" was introduced for the first time.
A disease, terrible for the elderly, - croupous pneumonia - suddenly hit Sechenov in the fall of 1905. The anticipation of an imminent death did not deceive the seventy-six-year-old scientist - on the morning of November 15, he lost consciousness, and around midnight Ivan Mikhailovich was gone. The great physiologist was buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery in a simple wooden coffin. Several years later, Sechenov's ashes were transferred to the Novodevichy cemetery. After himself, Sechenov left many students and a colossal legacy in the field of medicine and psychology. At home, a monument to Ivan Mikhailovich was erected, and in 1955 the name of Sechenov was given to the capital's medical institute. It is worth noting that St. Luke Voino-Yasenetsky in his writings emphasized that the theory of Sechenov and his follower Ivan Pavlov about the central nervous system is entirely consistent with the Orthodox doctrine.
