The history of the research of neuroinfections in the Department of Nervous Diseases of the Imperial Medical Surgical (Military Medical) Academy

The article presents the history of the research of neuroinfections at the Nervous Diseases Department of the Imperial Medical Surgical Academy, later the Military Medical Academy, from 1860 until nowadays. One of the outstanding achievements of Russian and world medicine in the twentieth century, constituting an entire era in neurology and virology, was the comprehensive study of tick-borne encephalitis by Aleksandr Gavrilovich Panov. He made a huge contribution to the research of this infection: “Clinic of spring-summer encephalitis” (1938) – the first journal article in the world literature on the clinical aspects of tick-borne encephalitis; the first Ph.D. thesis on the clinical picture of tick-borne encephalitis was successfully defended by A.G. Panov on February 20, 1939 under the leadership of A.V. Triumfov; the first monograph on tick-borne encephalitis and other encephalitis – “Seasonal summer encephalitis” (Vladivostok, 1940) also belongs to A.G. Panov. The results of the research of tick-borne encephalitis in 1934–1949 became the subject of a doctoral dissertation, defended on December 8, 1951. In 1956, the classic monograph by A.G. Panov “Tick-borne encephalitis” was published. At the end of XX and beginning of XXI centuries research work in the field of neuroinfection expanded, studies were carried out in various directions, including neuropathology of herpes–virus, alteration of the nervous system in botulism, acute demyelinating polyneuropathies, neuropathology of chlamydial infection, neuroborreliosis, neuropathology of infective endocarditis, alteration of the blood-brain barrier in meningitis, treatment of neuroinfectious diseases. For more than a century and a half, the staff of the Department of Nervous Diseases of the Imperial Medical Surgical (Military Medical) Academy have created and laid the foundation for the doctrine of neuroinfections for numerous followers, as well as the modern generation of neurologists and doctors of related specialties (bibliography: 10 refs)