The life and personality of Semyon Semyonovich Zimnitsky in the memoirs of contemporaries and students (on the 150th anniversary of his birth)

Abstract

Semyon Semyonovich Zimnitsky is an outstanding Russian and Soviet scientist, a doctor of the highest class, who has received worldwide recognition. He lived only 54 years, lived and worked in a very difficult social environment and no less problematic close circle. To his brilliant successes S.S. Zimnitsky owes both his heredity and his teachers — outstanding scientists of Russia, professors Sergei Sergeevich Botkin, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, as well as the conditions for fruitful work that were created at the end of his career. Zimnitsky's charisma was largely determined by his personal qualities. The article shows for the first time the characterological features of his unique, active nature. The people around him described the personality traits of S.S. Zimnitsky in very contradictory ways: from “very obstinate, emotional, constantly conflicting, not shy in expressions, tearing up medical records” to “a gentle, kind person, lively, cheerful, always energetic, always cheerful, with a friendly face, good-natured, with subtle humor, lyrically glorifying nature”. These characteristics differ in tone, but are similar in one thing — S.S. Zimnitsky was a very emotional person. Being a true patriot, through his research he called for Russian science to receive the same powerful magnitude and strength as Russian culture. A passionate and convinced fanatic of his ideas, he was a fiery polemicist, and this exceptional temperament, which gave an original and often bright subjective color to his reports and especially polemical speeches, was one of the significant obstacles to the dissemination of the brilliant ideas and achievements of S.S. Zimnitsky. A great lover of nature and connoisseur of it, S.S. Zimnitsky often, both when analyzing patients on rounds and at lectures, borrowed from nature living and original comparisons and examples that clearly depicted the phenomenon and were forever etched in the memory. His love for nature was also reflected in his poetic works, where much attention was paid to its beauties.

Keywords

history of medicine / S.S. Zimnitsky

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