DOCTOR OF MEDICINE PYOTR GRIGORYEVICH TROITSKY (14.01.1857 – 17.12.1927)
"He about whom a kind memory lives is not dead — he is merely far away; dead is he who is forgotten." (A.F. Koni)
Among the names that the regional history of medicine can take pride in, a place of honor belongs to Doctor of Medicine Pyotr Grigoryevich Troitsky (1857–1927). He devoted his entire life to the art of medicine, skillfully combining it with teaching.
Pyotr Grigoryevich Troitsky was born on January 14 (Old Style) 1857, in the selo of Pokrovskoye in the Gzhatsk district of Smolensk Governorate. His father was a psalm-reader; the Troitsky family was large, and Pyotr was the eldest of eight children.
P.G. Troitsky's path in life was determined in advance by his belonging to the clerical estate. He received his primary education at the parish school in the selo of Pokrovskoye and at the religious school in the town of Vyazma, Smolensk Governorate, and his secondary education at the Smolensk Theological Seminary. After completing the full course there, he spent a year teaching in order to save enough money for the journey to Moscow to enroll at the university.
P.G. Troitsky needed no small degree of courage and determination to break with the traditions of his estate and resolve to enter the university and become a physician. In 1877 he realized his dream and became a student in the medical faculty of Moscow University.
His student years passed in dire poverty: there was no stipend, his parents could offer no financial support, and so Pyotr was compelled to give private lessons, visiting his pupils at home and rushing from one end of the city to the other. Regular meals were out of the question. All of this could not fail to affect his health. He contracted tuberculosis, from which he managed to recover only after becoming a physician himself.
On May 31, 1882, upon receiving his university diploma, P.G. Troitsky signed the physician's oath, as was the custom of the time. For a man such as Pyotr Grigoryevich, this was no empty formality. He genuinely adhered to that oath throughout his life, and there is not a single article of it that he did not fulfill with honor.
After graduating from the university, he worked as a military physician until 1892 (with the exception of the period from January 1889 to June 1890, when he served as a zemstvo physician). He worked in Warsaw (to which P.G. Troitsky was posted to advance his training in military field surgery), in Zaraysk in Ryazan Governorate, and in Bronnitsy in Moscow Governorate.
In 1892, Pyotr Grigoryevich enrolled at the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg, which he completed in 1894, having earned the academic degree of Doctor of Medicine upon defending a dissertation entitled "The Viability of Certain Pathogenic Microbes on Black and White Bread."
From 1894 to 1900, Pyotr Grigoryevich served as a military physician in the towns of Yegorievsk and Zaraysk in Ryazan Governorate. In his medical practice, Troitsky specialized in internal medicine, ophthalmology, and pediatrics. In 1900 he was transferred to Nizhny Novgorod, where he worked for the rest of his life.
During the First World War, Pyotr Grigoryevich served at the front. He sustained a concussion in the war, the aftereffects of which stayed with him throughout his life: he was hard of hearing in one ear.
After returning from the war to Nizhny Novgorod, P.G. Troitsky worked as a military physician at an evacuation point, in the Nizhny Novgorod sector of the internal security troops of the republic, with the Volga Flotilla, and in hospitals. At the same time, in the evenings, he began working at the newly opened outpatient clinic on Piskunova Street.
After his demobilization from the army in the early 1920s, the main place of work for Doctor P.G. Troitsky remained the Central Outpatient Clinic on Zvezdinka Street (which was later relocated to Vorobyov Street), where he continued to work until the day of his death on December 17, 1927, from a cerebral hemorrhage.
P.G. Troitsky was not only engaged in medical practice; he also published scholarly articles in periodicals and carried out teaching work. He taught hygiene courses at secondary educational institutions in the city: at an infantry school, a diocesan school, a trade and economics technical college, and others. According to the recollections of his former pupils A.P. and K.F. Gubanov, P.G. Troitsky's classes "were always lively and interesting, and were invariably popular with students…"
It is worth noting that Doctor P.G. Troitsky participated in many cultural and educational events and was a member of the scientific and practical society of physicians in Nizhny Novgorod. As far back as the pre-revolutionary period, Pyotr Grigoryevich had begun promoting medical knowledge among the general public. At the Nizhny Novgorod Fair, in public gardens (Lubyansky Garden and others), he delivered public lectures on sanitary topics, illustrating them with a "magic" lantern.
Being an outstanding physician, Pyotr Grigoryevich had an extensive practice. Mention must be made of the respect that P.G. Troitsky earned among Nizhny Novgorod residents through his medical abilities and his sensitive attitude toward patients. He never refused a consultation to those in need, even when his office hours had ended. Without regard for the time of day or night, Doctor Troitsky would go to his patients. When visiting a poor family, he not only declined payment for the visit but also left his own money for the purchase of medicines.
Let us cite an excerpt from the memoirs of the Lebedeva sisters: "…In December 1904 – January 1905, P.G. Troitsky treated our mother, T.A. Lebedeva, who had fallen ill with purulent pleurisy in the maternity ward, and our newborn sister Maria, who had contracted pneumonia there at the same time. Our family was experiencing financial hardship at that period. Pyotr Grigoryevich was aware of this and treated both mother and child entirely free of charge, and treated them so successfully that neither of them was left with any trace of illness… In later years he likewise never accepted any payment from us for treatment, and we turned to him for help quite often: there were many children in the family, and one or another of them would fall ill from time to time…"
Pyotr Grigoryevich set aside special appointment days for patients who could not afford to pay.
P.G. Troitsky was loved and respected not only by his patients but also by his colleagues. Associate Professor N.I. Pariyskaya recalled him as follows: "I was a young, inexperienced physician with two years of experience. Pyotr Grigoryevich was the most senior and experienced doctor on the staff. He had devoted forty-five years of his life to medical work… One could turn to him with any question without embarrassment over one's ignorance. He always answered thoroughly and thoughtfully, and never showed irony toward inexperience or lack of knowledge. We young physicians always felt his sincere desire to help and his deep devotion to medical work…"
All who knew Doctor Pyotr Grigoryevich Troitsky held deep esteem for him as a humane person, in the fullest and finest sense of that word.
To him the words spoken by N.G. Chernyshevsky apply in their entirety: "Three qualities — broad knowledge, the habit of thinking, and nobility of feeling — are necessary for a person to be educated in the full sense of the word."
Pyotr Grigoryevich possessed all of these qualities. In Doctor of Medicine Pyotr Grigoryevich Troitsky, the finest traits of the Russian intelligentsia were embodied.
Opublished in the "Nizhny Novgorod Medical Journal" for 2003 (No. 2) — Author: E.A. Chizhova In writing this article, materials from the P.G. Troitsky collection held in the museum of the Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy were used.