Morphological aspects of the tissues of the 140-year-old embalmed body of N.I. Pirogov

Abstract

Professor Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov (1810-1881) was an anatomist, surgeon, and scientist. He studied in Moscow and Berlin, and was one of the founders of modern surgery and aseptic procedures. He described the use of plaster for the treatment of fractures, and the use of ether as an anesthetic in combat medicine. He published a number of papers on anatomy and surgery. He died on December 5, 1881, of oral cancer. His body was embalmed by anatomist Professor David Ilyich Vyvodstev (1830- 1896), and placed in a tomb in the Church of St. Nicholas in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. The first inspection of the body was performed by a commission of experts in 1927. This was followed by several re-embalmings of the body in the 1950s and 1980s by a team led by Professor Rafail Davidovich Sinelnikov (1896-1981), and several other procedures in the 1980s and 1990s by experts from Moscow's V.I. Lenina, (now VILAR: All-Russian Research Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants), until 2011. In 2017, regular care of the body was taken over by Ukrainian scientists, who, in 2018, performed all tissue and fluid analyses to determine the body’s state of preservation, and subsequent reembalmings. The results of microscopic and ultramicroscopic analysis showed some destructive changes in skin, skeletal muscle, and bone tissues. Despite these changes, however, the tissues of the body are relatively well preserved.