Mikhail Ilyich
Kuzin
1916-2009
Mikhail Ilyich Kuzin was an outstanding Soviet Russian surgeon, teacher, the director of the Vishnevsky Institute of Surgery, Academician of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor. He was born in the village of Muchkap in a peasant family. After finishing the seven-year school, he continued his studies at the Kirsanov Medical Working Faculty of Voronezh Medical Institute. In 1935, as the best student, he was sent to continue his studies in the city of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), to Military Medical Academy. During his studies, he joined the scientific work at the Department of Surgery, headed by N.N. Yelansky. In the winter of 1939-1940, as a 5th-year student, he took part in the Soviet-Finnish war as a doctor of a rifle battalion, where he had to help the wounded directly on the battlefield. In 1940 he graduated with honors from Military Medical Academy and entered the adjunct Department of Military Field Surgery. After a year of work at this department, in connection with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Professor N.N. Elansky suggested that a novice surgeon and a young officer “transfer the adjunct” to the front. Until 1943, Kuzin was a surgeon in the medical sanitary battalion and commander of the surgical dressing platoon. By the beginning of 1943, specialized hospitals began to be created in the front area, military field neurosurgeons were needed, and the command sent Kuzin to Moscow, to the Institute of Neurosurgery for short-term specialization. Since the spring of 1943 he worked at the front-line hospital for the wounded in the head, first as the head of the neurosurgical department, and then as the chief surgeon. With this hospital, he ended the war already on the Trans-Baikal Front. The results of hundreds of successful early operations formed the basis of the dissertation “Surgical care for the wounded in the spine and spinal cord in the frontline evacuation hospital” (1947). This work was awarded the prize of the editorial board of the multi-volume work “Experience of military medicine in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” From 1948 to 1951, Kuzin continued his professional training in Moscow as a doctoral student at the Military Faculty at the Central Institute for Advanced Medical Training (CIUV) with a secondment to work at the Faculty surgical clinic of the 1st Moscow Medical Institute named after I.M. Sechenov (I MMI). Here he performed clinical and experimental work in which he compared clinical data from the medical histories of victims of prolonged crushing of limbs during the 1947 earthquake in the archives of hospitals (Ashgabat, Tashkent, Mary, Baku) with the results of numerous experiments. This made it possible to clarify the clinical manifestations of the disease, its complications, the effectiveness of the methods of treatment used, to summarize the results of pathoanatomic studies. This allowed him to write and in 1954 successfully defend his dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences on the topic “Prolonged crushing syndrome: clinic, pathogenesis and treatment”. The work remained closed for a long period and was published in an abridged form only in 1959. It was the first comprehensive monograph on this topic in the world. From 1951 to 1958, Kuzin worked as a senior lecturer at the Department of Military Field and Clinical Surgery of the Military Faculty at the CIU. But for two years the work at the department was interrupted due to the appointment to a special group to study the nature of combat trauma in the explosion of an atomic bomb. He spent one season in Totsk camps and the second at a training ground near Semipalatinsk. In 1957 the military faculty was closed, Kuzin received the position of associate professor at the N.N. Burdenko Faculty Surgical Clinic by competition, was demobilized in 1958 and soon was appointed dean of the 1st Medical Faculty of the I MMI. In 1959 he was awarded the title of professor. After the sudden death of his teacher N.N. Elansky in 1964 Kuzin was elected the director of the faculty surgical clinic, which he headed until 1990. He managed to preserve the scientific, therapeutic and pedagogical potential of the clinic and significantly increase it. In 1966-1974 he was the Rector of the I MMI and at the same time the chief surgeon of the Ministry of Health of the USSR. As a rector, Kuzin continued to work at the clinic. During this period, the clinic was actively engaged in lung surgery. The results of the work were summarized in the works “Ways to improve surgical treatment of lung cancer”, “Acute pleural empyema” and “Therapeutic gymnastics in thoracic surgery”. Since 1962, Kuzin, together with neurologists, began a series of works devoted to the surgical treatment of patients with myasthenia gravis. Every year precious experience was gained, difficulties became less, and the results of thymectomy were better. In 1996 the monograph “Myasthenia gravis” was published, in which the diagnostic experience was summarized, indications for surgery were formulated, methods of preparing patients for it and postoperative treatment were described. The achievements of the faculty surgical clinic in this area were unique. In 1969 he was elected a corresponding member, and in 1975 – a full member (academician) of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (now – RAMS). Kuzin and his team were awarded the USSR State Prize for the development of new methods of treating wounds and burns using aerotherapy units and the Clinitron unit.
Address: Moscow, Bolshaya Serpukhovskaya str., 27, p. 7
