The contribution of medical communities and rural doctors to the development of sanitary care in the Saratov province in the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century

The article describes the main stages of the formation and development of sanitary care in the Saratov province at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The authors cite data on the activities of the provincial medical board of the Order of Public Charity on providing medical assistance and measures to combat epidemics to the population in the first half of the 19th century, before the introduction of zemstvo. The article shows the role of medical societies (the physico-medical society, the society of sanitary doctors and the military sanitary society) in the development of sanitary care and in the fight against infectious diseases and their prevention. It also describes the influence of the decisions of the provincial congresses of territorial doctors, the sanitary bureau, medical sanitary councils and the executive sanitary committee upon the organisation of sanitary and anti-epidemic measures and preventative vaccinations against smallpox and diphtheria. The article studies the personal contribution of prominent representatives of provincial medicine, I.I. Molleson and N.I.Tezyakov, who made a significant contribution to improving the forms and methods of organising and developing sanitary work in the Saratov province at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It shows the role of scientists of the medical faculty of the Saratov University in studying the aetiology and improving the diagnosis and treatment of typhus in the early 1920s. The authors note a positive dynamic in the development of sanitary care during this period, as evidenced by the characteristic improvement in the epidemiological situation in the Saratov province.