Alexey Dmitrievich
Speransky
1888-1961
Alexey Dmitrievich Speransky was a Soviet pathologist, Academician of the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, Major General of the Medical Service, laureate of the USSR State Prize and the I.P. Pavlov Prize of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Honored Scientist of the RSFSR. He was born in Urzhum, the Vyatka province, he lived in Vyatka until the age of 8, where his father D.M. Speransky was a member of the district court. In 1896, due to the transfer of his father’s service, the family moved to Kazan. In 1911 A.D. Speransky graduated with honors from the Medical Faculty of Kazan University and was left as a dissector at the Department of Anatomy. At the same time, he worked as a resident of a surgical clinic, and then as a zemstvo doctor. From 1914 to 1919, he was a military surgeon, working in hospitals and army dressing detachments. Observing “disruptions” in the behavior of experimental dogs when the balance of arousal and inhibition is disturbed as a result of the action of a destructive stimulus of great force, A.D. Speransky introduced the term “neurosis of fear”. A similar condition in patients who suffered severe trauma in the years after the First World War was called “traumatic neurosis”. In the laboratory of I.P. Pavlov A.D. Speransky developed an original method of freezing individual areas of the cerebral cortex without damaging the meninges. In 1930 the monograph “The Nervous system in pathology” was published, in which the results of A.D. Speransky’s research with the participation of a number of employees were presented, and two years later another monograph was published – “Epileptic seizure”. In 1934 the collection “Nervous trophy in the theory and practice of medicine” was published, and in 1935 the book “Elements of the construction of the theory of medicine” was published. Since 1937, in connection with the organization of the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine (VIEM), the scientific activity of A.D. Speransky was continued in Moscow. During the Great Patriotic War, A.D. Speransky performed responsible work in the Main Sanitary Department of the Soviet Army. He gave all his strength and his great talent to the Motherland. He was awarded two Orders of Lenin, two Orders of the Red Banner and medals for his great achievements in the development of domestic medicine and for continuous work in public activities. During the Great Patriotic War, A.D. Speransky transferred the Stalin Prize awarded to him to the Defence Fund.
Address: Moscow, Baltiyskaya str., 8
