dissertation, "The Methods of Action of Drugs on the Human 

 Body," 7 * which after his death was translated into Russian 

 by K. V. Lebedev. 



This dissertation was considered an extraordinary 

 contribution to the scientific literature of that time. 

 Diadkovskii appeared as a fearless opponent of spreading 

 idealistic ideas. He demolished the challenges by foreign 

 authorities and successfully defended materialistic ideology, 

 continuing the glorious traditions of Lomonosov and Radishchev. 



The first section of Diadkovskii' s dissertation, "General 

 Understanding about Drugs and the Circumstances Promoting 

 an Explanation of the Methods of Their Action on the Human 

 Body," begins with a dialectic: "Nature did not create anything 

 that is absolutely useful, absolutely harmful, or completely 

 useless. "72 Rather, drugs and poisons act, depending upon 

 their nature, on the condition of the organism. At the end of 

 the first section, Diadkovskii, having developed and illustrated 

 this idea, lifted it to the level of a biological generaliza- 

 tion. "There is nothing like the continuous tendency toward 

 the destruction of the organism; however, in its recovery 

 undoubtedly the useful becomes harmful , and the harmful becomes 

 useful." 73 



The second and most important section of the dissertation 

 was entitled "Discussion of the Related Powers of Nature in 

 General and the Life Powers in the Narrow Understanding of 

 the Word." He started with opinions of nature-investigators, 

 according to which there are two types of bodies in nature, 

 living and non-living. The first, from this point of view, 

 is characterized by the presence of individual life powers. 

 Diadkovskii decisively confirmed that "the ideas about the 

 differentiation of the bodies and their powers do not agree 

 with their (the nature-investigators, confirming the existence 



71. Diadkovskii, DISSERTATIO INAUGURAL IS MEDICA DE 

 MODO, QUO AGUNT MEDICAMENTA IN CORPUS HUMANUM. 

 Moscow, 1816. 87 pp. 



72. Russian translation edited by Lebedev, p. 159. 



73. Ibid., p. 162. 



195 



