CHAPTER 1 



THE BEGINNING OF EMBRYOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS 

 IN RUSSIA IN LOMONOSOV'S EPOCH 



The end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of 

 the eighteenth century are considered a turning point in the 

 history of Russian culture, connected with the reorganizing 

 activity of Peter I . To overcome economic backwardness and 

 to consolidate the powerful State, specialists in the fields 

 of industry, military affairs, and medicine were necessary. 

 But the existing seventeenth-century Russian educational 

 institutions — Slavic, Greek, and Latin academies in Kiev, 

 Mogilyanskaya, and Moscow — offered religious-scholastic 

 education which could not insure the preparation of such 

 specialists. In the beginning, different specialists were 

 invited from abroad; however, the need to prepare their own 

 was clear. At the beginning of the eighteenth century in 

 Moscow, and later in Petersburg, the schools of mathematical 

 and navigational sciences (1701), preparatory (1703), surgery 

 (1706), engineering (1712), and others were therefore 

 established. 



Medical education required materials, first of all for 

 the study of anatomy, the basis of medical science. Besides 

 the preparation of these anatomical demonstrations for 

 training future physicians, natural-historical demonstrations 

 were collected to illustrate the normal and deformed develop- 

 ment of the human and animal embryo. The formation of the 

 embryological and teratological collection was carried out 

 by nominal decrees . 



On February 13,1718 Peter I gave the following decree: 



It is known that monstrosities are born of 

 freak humans, animals and birds, which are 

 collected in all conditions for their interest. 

 A decree had been established many years previous 



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