CHAPTER 5Surviving Plague, Mixing Races

The Plague

During the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), the bubonic plague arrived along the front between the two empires, affecting Moldova and Wallachia in 1769. Russia's physicians blamed the Ottomans for spreading the malady. In 1770, the plague arrived in Poland and Ukraine, reaching Kyiv by the summer. By November 1770, patients with plague-like symptoms were recorded in Moscow's military hospital, but it would not be until March 1771 before the Senate acknowledged that the plague had indeed arrived in Russia.³ Charles de Mertens, a German physician working at the Moscow Foundling Hospital, recorded the arrival of the plague and its spread, symptoms, potential treatments, and preventative measures in a short tract published in Latin in 1778, in French in 1784, and in English in 1799.⁴ A plague outbreak in Russia was hardly unprecedented, but one had not occurred since the 1730s. What might have been more devastating in the 1770s was that this outbreak followed Russia's significant investment in improving the empire's health. All the good work of Catherine's government was undone seemingly overnight.

Following the plague, Mertens's account was the only text written by a physician working in Russia that circulated throughout Europe. Mertens's version of events, however, was but one man's view, and this was a later version than the contemporaneous one permeating the court in St. Petersburg. The diplomats in the city closely noted the progress of the disease and kept foreign capitals abreast of the latest development. If the plague became widespread, it not only threatened Russia but also threatened all of Europe through Russia's trade connections. On April 1, 1771, news of a disease spreading in Moscow arrived in St. Petersburg. As the British ambassador extraordinary, Charles Cathcart, reported “A very ugly, malignant, if not pestilential, Fever, has broke out at Moscow; but the Court [confirms] it is not the Plague, & their Opinion seems confirm’d by the Letters the Merchants receive[d] from thence.” Cathcart had learned that the fever had been transmitted in “Bales of Wool, brought from distant Parts of the Ukraine.” Even if no one in St. Petersburg believed this fever was the plague, evidence indicated that this was more serious than a seasonal illness. Cathcart discovered that “there was another Alarm of this sort, some Months ago, which proceeded from the want of Care in an Hospital at Moscow, & I flatter myself, from the best Accounts I can learn, their Disorder is of the same Sort.”⁵ Less than a week after his initial report, Cathcart wrote with confidence, that “all apprehensions with respect to the pestilential quality of the Fever at Moscow were at an End,” as he had been informed by Count Panin, and Panin's report “is since confirm[ed] from all hands.”⁶

Having been assured by those at the highest level of government that the pestilential illness had ended, it is not a surprise that the fires that broke out in St. Petersburg in May were of greater concern to Cathcart than a search for other evidence about the potential plague. Moscow's continuing struggles to contain the plague, in fact, were not mentioned in court until the end of August, because the entire interest of the city was engaged first by suspected arson, and then by a more immediate illness, that of Grand Duke Paul, heir to the throne. Paul suffered from a cold that was thought to be relatively minor when it began, but, once he was not able to travel to the Peterhof Palace outside of St. Petersburg in late June, it was clear that it was more severe. On June 28, 1771, Cathcart wrote to the foreign secretary with the good news that “tho’ his Imperial Highness has had a longer Continuance of this Cold than was expected when I wrote last, he has had so much better nights and symptoms so much more favourable yesterday and to day, that there is not the smallest Reason to apprehend that his Disorder will be of any Duration.”⁷ A distant problem in Moscow was not nearly as engrossing as the potential of Russia losing its heir.

A week after Cathcart's initial report, further details arrived from the court. Panin informed Cathcart that Paul was “as well as … can possibly be expected.” Into the second week of a poorly-defined illness that kept the grand duke incapable of leaving his bed, interest was great for a plausible explanation. It was “thought principally to have proceeded from a Revolution in his Constitution at this time,” as he had “of late grown extremely fast.”⁸ As Paul failed to improve throughout the summer, further explanations and optimistic predictions were offered to offset concerns. On July 5, Cathcart wrote with the expectation that “having resisted so well, so violent, and continued a Disorder, after which he will probably enjoy a firmer state of Health than before.” Paul's only real challenge was that he remained confined to his bed, “and in very warm weather,” which had “greatly weakened him, but he is thought to have given Proofs of an excellent Constitution.”⁹

When Paul reached his third week still in bed with a fever, Cathcart began to question this optimism. Believing that “those about the Grand Duke” seem to have “a sort of Blindness” to reality, Cathcart admitted to the foreign secretary “that his situation is not without great Danger.” After twenty-days days, the fever appeared to break, “which gave him Relief; but his Fever is not entirely gone; he is much troubled with a Cough, which is a late Symptom, & extremely weak & emaciated. There seems to be some hidden cause, which Nature is desirous to throw off, & if She cannot succeed, I am afraid things will end ill for him.” The case was serious enough that Catherine's personal physician, Dr. John Rogerson, avoided treating the grand duke. Cathcart believed this “very lucky for that Gentlemen,” as Rogerson would avoid the blame if Paul died.¹⁰ Following this dire report, however, Paul's recovery progressed. By July 12, nearly a month after his fever began, he was “certainly better than he had been.” His physicians attributed the improvement to “the late Change in the weather, which had for some time been unusually sultry.”¹¹ On July 15, the court celebrated Paul's first day “entirely without Fever.” His physicians optimistically reported his “Distemper” was “entirely over, but the Recovery from Fevers of that Duration is always extreamely slow.”¹²

By the end of July, Paul had recovered sufficiently to be able to “sit up some part of the day” and was “entirely free from all his Complaints.”¹³ It would be months before he resumed his regular life in the court. The explanations offered at the time provide a window into medical knowledge in Russia in the 1770s. The illness was attributed to his growth spurt, which led to an imbalance of his humors. The length of his illness was affected by the climate, as proven not only by the length of the fever but also by its abatement when the weather cooled. Pharmaceutical interventions were rejected, as the “Distemper must [be] left to go off by degrees.”¹⁴ The lengthy illness in fact was a net positive for Paul, as “his Imperial Highness's Constitution will after his Recovery receive infinite advantage.”¹⁵

The popular explanation of Paul's illness circulating in St. Petersburg would have been a greater concern for the government than the diplomatic gossip. Once news of his illness spread in the city, “the common People took the Alarm, suspected he was poisoned; and, it is said, accused very high Persons.” As his illness continued for weeks, “it was given out that he was a State Prisoner, and many Officers and Under Officers of the Guards were heard to complain, that they daily expected to be called out, and if so, could not determine themselves whom they ought to obey.” Catherine and Panin both rejected any suggestion of danger, but Cathcart feared that “from these Seeds someone or other much Mischief may grow.”¹⁶

Although the court accepted the humoral explanation of the physicians, the city's populace did not. This view reflects the acceptance of humoral diagnoses that dominated literate circles, even outside the physicians in court and the naturalists at the academy. This does not mean the timing of Paul's illness was not helpful for the government in terms of distracting the court, the diplomats, and even St. Petersburg's merchants from the reality of the plague expanding in Moscow during the summer of 1771. In Mertens's later account, he confirmed the court's narrative that the plague had ended in the spring, making it unnecessary to discuss. Mertens's argument was the combination of the earlier quarantine measures in Moscow, supported by the weather remaining “very cold until the middle of April,” which allowed the plague to become “fixed and inactive.”¹⁷ After all, cold temperatures had long been known to eliminate the plague.¹⁸ Mertens, unlike Panin and the court, knew that by the end of June, an outbreak occurred at the former quarantine hospital among its staff, followed by several cases being reported in “the suburb at Preobraginsky” at the beginning of July. From then, the plague spread rapidly, overwhelming the city. By “the middle of August, the number of deaths amounted daily to four hundred; and at the end of the same month to as many as six hundred.”¹⁹

At the same time, the government's report in late August, provided to the British foreign secretary, presented an alternate reality: “As to the Plague at Moscow, … it had never existed; tho’ many principal Inhabitants have deserted the Town, and the Government have from complicated reasons of Policy, established a Quarantine. The miserable Poor, the only rank affected, are exposed to the precautions of the Police which would be very ludicrous were they not extreamely tragical, and fatal to great Numbers.” Most important, “the Distemper, which from a similitude of some of the Symptoms has given this alarm, draws its origin not from Egypt or Turkey but from America.”²⁰ The American argument was essential in this narrative, as the last two plagues that affected Russia earlier in the century had both emerged from the Ottoman Empire. The ambassador's report to the foreign secretary dismissed any possible connection to the plague, arguing that this outbreak was a more common North American illness that should hardly cause any fear. Had this been truthful, the similarity of the climates between Russia's Eurasian empire and its North American reaches suggested this current outbreak was an endemic issue rather than a new epidemic. The geographic origin of a disease was highly significant in terms of whom might be infected, how they might recover, and what risks foreigners could face.

Within a month, however, further news from Moscow destroyed the optimistic claim of North American origins: “that the Distemper at Moscow, tho it still has been confined to the lowest class of Inhabitants whose way of life frequently produced infections, and malignant Fevers, appears by the last accounts, even by the Letters of a private correspondent of mine who has from the beginning seen many of the sick and Dead, and never before was convinced of it, is an acknowledged and confirmed Plague.”²¹ For the rest of the empire, a strict quarantine had been imposed, resulting in “that unhappy City is cut off from all that Surrounds it.” Even more hopeful, the country “very soon expect[s] that the front, the great Enemy to the progress of the Distemper, will set it.” On the basis of these positive developments, Cathcart assured the British foreign secretary there would not be any reason to interfere with Russia's exports. The Russian government's only concern was that a “Pannick had seized the Highest as well as the lowest,” leading to rioting in Moscow. Even this development was already being addressed, as Count Fedor Grigoreevich Orlov was dispatched to prosecute the rioters and restore order to the city.²²

Catherine's government issued an ukaz to provide Orlov the authority to seize control over Moscow. The ukaz instructed the residents that Catherine acted from “maternal Condolence [for] the shocking Effects of Disease which have spread and raged in Moscow.” Part of Orlov's mission was to uncover the truth of the illness, as “all Moscow will agree with me that the wide Contagion of the Distemper proceeded mostly from a false Opinion formed by a great part, nay by most, of the Inhabitants, that the Evil was not so pernicious, so infelicitous, that the Deaths ensuring from it were casual, or according to the unsearchable Will of Heaven.” Once the “true cause” was known, all available resources would be provided to “stop the destructive Infection, and restore the publick Welfare.” A copy of the ukaz was provided to Cathcart to ensure that the British government would be aware of Russia's response to eradicating the disease.²³

From Moscow, Orlov began to update Cathcart directly. Although Cathcart's regular informant on Russian matters was Panin, Britain's trade with Russia was sufficiently important to the Russian government for immediate updates to be valuable to both parties. Orlov's first dispatch, however, was “very melancholy.”²⁴ It was an official accounting of the recent plague riots. According to the dispatch, once the archbishop “ordered a favourite wonder-working Picture to be taken down,” it inspired a quick response: “The People took the Alarm, cried out the Archbishop was robbing the Church, & guilty of Sacriledge; They rang their great Bells, assembled in great Numbers, march’d to the criminal, storm’d the Archbishop's Palace, destroyed all that was in it, except the contents of his cellars, which They drank, but did not find him, as he had sped to a Monastery at Eight Versts distance.” It was only a temporary refuge, “In the Morning, They march’d to the Monastery, where They found the Archbishop celebrating Mass, They waited ‘till it was over, & even ‘till he had consecrated a Priest, after which, They tore him from the Sanctuary, & put him cruelly to Death by Blows given at considerable Intervals.” Having killed the archbishop, the mob “destroyed all the Pest-Houses of the Police, turn’d out the Patients, swore Destruction to all Phisicians, Surgeons, &c. and buried the dead in Greek Churches. A Body of Troops was march’d against Them. They stoned the commanding Officer; They were then fired upon, & dispers’d after some Hundreds were kill’d.”²⁵ As concerning as the deaths resulting from the riot may have been, Orlov's assessment on the current status of the plague was good news, at least for the elites and merchants: “The single symptom which is at all favorable is, that the Distemper still continues to affect only the lowest class of People, which looks as if the Air were not yet infected, & that those who live better, & keep Themselves clean are not in Danger.”²⁶ Aside from the casual disregard for the massive loss of life resulting from the plague, Orlov suggested the lack of transmission through the air and the importance of hygiene for avoiding infection—risks elites could avoid.

Following Orlov's dispatch, Catherine led a significant effort to prevent any European response to Russia's contagion. She read Orlov's latest dispatches in court, on the principle that there was nothing to hide and to assure the public that the situation was well in hand. Immediately following Orlov's arrival in the city, he found “every thing perfectly quiet, and that the Mortality was sensibly decreased.” Having observed that “many recover even in the common Hospitals, there is great reason to hope that the Distemper is past its Height and will as usual gradually diminish, especially as the weather grows colder.”²⁷ Despite the good news from Moscow, further information arrived in St. Petersburg noting the spread of the plague to the nearby towns, which raised questions about the effectiveness of the quarantine. This news was sufficiently alarming that Cathcart suggested to the foreign minister his concern that “the Plague will not only depopulate Moscow, but several of the most fertile, & flourishing Provinces of Russia, before it can be suppress’d.”²⁸ Catherine's strategy to allay fears may not have succeeded.

In Catherine's private correspondence with Voltaire, she did not admit that it was the plague. She acknowledged that “Disease is rife at Moscow,” but “there is an epidemic of various fevers, which are causing numerous fatalities, despite all the precautions that have been taken.” In her letter, she remarked that “Orlov asked as a favour to be allowed to go there [Moscow], to ascertain on the spot what measures would be the most suitable for checking the outbreak.” The actual problem overtaking Moscow was not the “various fevers,” but rather the residents of the city, who demonstrated the “contradictions and excesses it [the public] is capable of.”²⁹ The violence against the archbishop, not the disease, was causing damage.

Although the Russian government remained publicly optimistic about their control over the disease, by November, both Great Britain and the Netherlands imposed quarantines on ships arriving with Russian goods. Cathcart attempted to persuade the foreign secretary these actions were unnecessary, as there had been “the least Hazard of the Plague's being brough to any of the Russian Sea Ports.” Cathcart argued from what he learned from Russia's actions, no quarantine on goods was necessary. He was “assured that the Plague is not infectious unless from Contact, or from the Breadth of an Infected Person,” and there had been no evidence of it spreading through “Bale goods,” but he admitted it had been spread by “Cloaths which have been worn, or handled by people who are infected.” Cathcart in fact seemed impressed at the methods employed by the Russian government to protect the public. If plague was discovered, the infected space was “aired, and perfumed with Vinegar, Juniper, Feathers, &c. a room set a part for any of the Family who falls ill, and who is sent to the Lazaret, if his Distemper proves to be the Plague.” While the medical response impressed, the civil regulations were concerning: “The Police are generally so oppressive that poor People often chuse rather to die without assistance than to declare themselves ill, and the living are frequently so covetous that they will willfully sell or wear the Cloaths of the infected Dead and keep their apparel.”³⁰ According to Cathcart's understanding, the high mortality in Moscow was not the result of inadequate medical care but rather oppressive policing.

By the end of the year, Cathcart responded to specific inquiries from London about the nature of the disease. The most important fact began his letter: “There is no Doubt that the Moscow Distemper is the true Levant Plague, that it has spread to so many places in the Neighborhood and to many Towns upon the Volga, and that altho’ it seems to be almost every where extinguished and will so for the present be universaly and entirely so, there is great danger that by Cloaths, Furniture, and Merchandize, and by Persons, should the Distemper appear again when the Weather grows warm, the Infection may be carried, unless prevented, to the Sea Ports of Russia.”³¹ Cathcart had faith in the quarantine and health measures adopted by the Russian government to control the future spread of the disease, but he admitted that if “any Civil or Military Officer should suffer himself to be corrupted or surprized, Goods might pass from infected placed and might avoid the Quarantine.”³² Cathcart detailed over a series of pages the manifold steps taken to guarantee that all trade goods were properly aired and cleaned before being packed into British ships, but little of this allayed concerns about Russian officials accepting bribes to risk the public's health. Much like his earlier dispatch, the public health measures in place would be effective, if the human error of corrupt government could be avoided. When Catherine's government issued a new ukaz in January 1772 to protect Russia's trade goods, Cathcart dutifully sent a translation to London, but the legal protections did not alter his assessment.³³

Despite Cathcart's fears, by the time of the January ukaz, the plague was under control. The Russian government was sufficiently encouraged by the effectiveness of its health measures that it prepared a guidebook for preventing the plague and even provided Cathcart a copy for the British government. The “Recipe for a fumigation powder against the plague invented for the Moscow Commission, 1771” included both the formula for the powder and an outline of nine steps for its effective use over a variety of spaces, products, and people. The powder was composed of juniper branches and berries, guaiac bark, myrrh, saltpeter, sulfur, and wheat. It was most effective when the powder was placed on burning coals in an enclosed room.³⁴ As evidence of its effectiveness, Cathcart relayed a report from Orlov concerning a recent experiment. Orlov “ordered, toward the End of the last year, ten malefactors who were under Sentence of Death for having been concerned in the Moscow Riot, to be confined three weeks in a Lazarette, to be laid upon the Beds, and dressed in the Cloaths, taken from men Sick, dying, and even Dead of the Plague, in the Hospital, without their having undergone any other precaution than the fumigations &c. expressed in the Paper, and none of the ten malefactors were then infected, or have since been ill.”³⁵ Neither Cathcart nor Orlov, apparently, were concerned about the fate of ten men used in this experiment. After all, they had all been sentenced to death. We might consider death by plague to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment, but Cathcart believed it was a sensible approach to a serious issue and accepted the experiment as proof of the powder's strength.

The Russian Senate issued a new ukaz in March with more extensive guidelines for properly cleaning and packing trade goods to maintain exports during the quarantine.³⁶ With an effective prophylactic in hand, and a military presence to enforce the Senate's guidelines, the plague was under control, if not eliminated, by the spring of 1772. Concerns remained that the return of warmer weather would lead to a new outbreak, but “the going off of the Frost has produced no Symptom of Distemper any where.”³⁷

Cathcart's dispatches from St. Petersburg were an official account of the progress and treatment of the plague in 1771 and 1772. He reported the latest news from Catherine, Orlov, and Panin, and he had the official ukazy translated and dispatched. He explained in detail the current quarantine methods and included the formula for Russia's new fumigating powder. By contrast, the best-known account of the plague in Europe by the end of the century was that of Mertens. Mertens was in Moscow during the plague and had gained a reputation for his prophylactic measures, because his Foundling Hospital avoided an outbreak unlike what was experienced at the other Moscow institutions. Mertens later assessment, however, also raised some questions about what, exactly, had occurred in Moscow. He noted a broad range of symptoms, from simple headaches to visible buboes, and from mild perspiration to uncontrollable fevers. Although the buboes were the pathognomonic sign of the plague, what happened to the other patients? Indeed, Mertens recorded weeks of debate among the Russian medical establishment and government authorities, including the Senate, before a final decision was reached that this was the plague. His account plausibly suggested that the contagion may have been the plague and at least one other disease during the outbreak.

To be fair to the doubters, the plague was not a cold disease, so its presence would be seen as unlikely to many. Certainly, Russia's attempt to argue that this epidemic arrived from cold North America rather than the “hot” Ottoman Empire, relied on the physicians’ nosological classification of diseases. It was beneficial to properly identify the disease as the plague, because this gave Russia's physicians the confidence that the cold climate would stop the spread of the illness. No hot disease could survive a cold climate. Russia might not be able to mitigate the effects of scurvy in its climate, but its inclement climate offered some advantages.

Mixed Peoples

Russia's suppression of the plague in 1772 was evidence of the effectiveness of the mechanisms it could implement. Conversely, the plague outbreak only a few years after its ambitious inoculation program threatened to reveal Russia's efforts as ineffective as ever. The empire was undermined by endemic diseases and the recent epidemic. Critics still argued that the population remained low and Russia's natural resources were unexploited. Apart from the catastrophe of 1771–1772, the Academy of Sciences was still dedicated to other issues. In that vein, it launched a new Siberian expedition to identify resources and address its ongoing challenges before the plague outbreak in Moscow.

The new expedition was led by Peter Simon Pallas, a German physician with specialized botany training, who became a professor at the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1768.³⁸ He was accompanied by Johann Gottlieb Georgi, another German physician who later joined the academy. Each man would subsequently publish his observations, contributing toward another official record of the empire's resources; within a decade of the texts’ first publications, they would appear in German, French, and English editions.³⁹ The expedition left St. Petersburg before the plague arrived in Moscow, but its publications followed the plague. Considering the timing of the expedition, as well as the general tasks confronting the academicians, it is no surprise that the health of the empire featured as prominently in their texts as it had in reports from the Second Kamchatka Expedition. Both Pallas and Georgi relied on earlier German naturalists’ commentaries on Russia, particularly Johann Georg Gmelin's and Georg Wilhem Steller's accounts. Pallas's and Georgi's narratives, therefore, had numerous similarities, built on common precedents, and shared a purpose of providing a complete description of the people and resources of the Russian Empire. Their reliance on Gmelin and Steller resulted in significant similarities in their observations.

Georgi's volumes are the more thorough of the two, in terms of descriptions of imperial subjects. He presented each group within a continuum: a physical description of the typical man and woman as well as an examination of their lifestyles and occupations; clothing and customs (with a particular focus on marriage and childbirth); health and illness; and food, climate, and temperament. In other words, he included all of the nonnaturals. The English edition of his text, Russia: Or A Compleat Historical Account of All of the Nations which Compose that Empire (1780–1783), was translated by William Tooke, who was then the chaplain of the Russia Company in St. Petersburgh but would become a future member of the academy. Tooke eventually produced another comprehensive assessment of the all of the peoples of the empire, but that text would not be published until the turn of the century.⁴⁰ Georgi's Russia envisioned the Russian Empire as a series of ethnolinguistically defined bands across the empire. It began with “Laplanders” stretching from Scandinavia across northern Russian until reaching the Ural Mountains; continued with “Tatars” as a broad Turkic group from Kazan’ in the south and east until meeting the Iakuts on the border of China; and then arrived at the “Samoyeds” from the Urals in the east to Kamchatka. None of these labels works by modern conceptions of ethnolinguistic identity, including the numerous Finno-Ugric people who across the region who did not neatly fit into the Laplander and Samoyed groups.

These divisions reflect those defined by Carl Linnaeus. Skin color and geography influenced his four types of man, two of whom were readily identified in the Russian Empire. In Linnaeus's classification, the Laplanders were the white Europeans and the Tatars were “dark” Asians.⁴¹ The challenge of Russia, and its primary contribution toward this taxonomic system, were the groups that fell between European and Asian. Tooke translated the last section of Russia as “Various Nations whose Origin is Mixed and Uncertain”; it was primarily the Samoyed group, composed of various Siberian populations, including some of the Ostiaks, the Tungus, and Itelemen from Kamchatka.⁴² But this liminal category, spanning thousands of miles across Eurasia, highlighted some of the shortcomings of Linnaeus's system. Whatever division could be drawn between Europeans and Asians collapsed in the expanse of the Russian Empire.

This does not imply that Georgi's study did not see broad similarities across the empire. Indeed, he accepted that similar environments produced similar bodies. Most of the people of the empire were described as either phlegmatic or melancholic (i.e., the cold constitutions). The Laplanders, those Finnic peoples on the northwestern edge of the empire, for example, were “of a middling stature. They have generally a flattish face, fallen cheeks, dark grey eyes, thin beard, brown hair, are well-built, straight, and of a yellowish complexion, occasioned by the weather.” Laplander women were “short, complaisant, chaste, often well-made, and extremely nervous.” Both sexes in Georgi's description were portraits of phlegmatic complexion, including chasteness, as disinterest in sexual activity was another phlegmatic sign. It follows a humoral logic, therefore, that “venereal disease is unknown in Lapland.” In spite of this disinterest, perhaps, Laplanders did procreate. “Sterility is a sort of reproach among the Lapland women, … They are generally delivered without difficulty. The husband assists at the labour, and affords his wife the necessary help. Without this practice they would often be distressed, as the habitations are frequently at such a distance one from another to preclude the aid of any other women.” Childbirth was not their only challenge, as “their common diseases are the itch, phthisis, and putrid fevers. They are subject to inflammations in the eyes, the effects of the snow and the continual smoke they are exposed to in their huts.”⁴³

The Laplanders compared poorly to their neighbors, the Finns. They were a “fertile stock,” and more important, Finns were “the parent of almost all the northern nations of Europe,” although they were “of Asiatic origin.” The Finns “lived to a very advanced age; although the dropsy, the scurvy, the epilepsy, … are disease very common among the country people.” The Estonians were “very like the Finns. Great numbers of them are of a phlegmatic and melancholic disposition. Except life itself, and the pleasures of love, every thing in the world is indifferent to them.” Primarily, he concluded, the phlegmatic nature made them “idle, filthy, and addicted to drunkenness.” Many of the broad “Laplander” group faced similar criticism. Mari “men have neither the vivacity nor the determined character of the Russians; and their women are much inferior to those of Russia, as well in regard to comeliness, as in gaiety of temper, and vanity of dress.” The Chuvashes “have indeed a paler complexion, are more lazy, and are not so sharp-witted” as the Maris. Georgi and Tooke frequently described the humoral bodies of the imperial subjects in these types of stereotypical strokes. The “Barabintzes,” a Turkic group living on the Baraba steppe south of Ufa, were “almost all of them of a phlegmatic habit, with a pale complexion, to which natural dullness may be added to their poverty and want of instruction.” This was the result of “the air of Baraba during the summer [which] is continually charged with vapour.” The poor climate of Baraba was such that they were “cold even in their amours, and rarely drink to intoxication.”⁴⁴

Considerable effort was given to documenting marriage rituals and birth practices across the empire. This reflected the ongoing concern with raising the empire's birth rates, an effort that had begun more than a decade earlier. The Mordvins of the Middle Volga Region, for example, “when the time of delivery approaches, the women retire to the bathing room. Here she receives the accustomed visits, and those of her friends, who name the new-born child.” Among the Nogai Tatars on the southern steppe, “their manner of facilitating, as they call it, the delivery of their women, is exactly contrary to common sense; when the women is near her time they tie a belt under her arms, by which they hoist her up and let her fall successively” (figure 5.1). Among the Samoyeds of Siberia, “women are delivered with surprising facility, almost without pain or any accident; the least pain in child-birth causes an immediate suspicion that she has had some illicit conversation with other men, and therefore is let to suffer, for the sake of extorting a confession of her fault, with the name of her gallants, who, in such a case, may save themselves trouble of any justification, as, whether innocent or guilty, they must make satisfaction to the injured husband; but these reparations consist almost always in some trifle.”⁴⁵

Figure 5.1. Georgi's illustration of a Mordvin woman. “Finskie narody: Mordovka so spinoiu,” Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library, New York Public Library Digital Collections, accessed June 9, 2024, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/19ef0b30-c6d2-012f-72ae-58d385a7bc34.

The Samoyeds were hardly alone in their concern over potential infidelities; Georgi documented a range of reactions across the empire. For the Tatars of Kazan’, Georgi argued that the Quran inspired their social mores, as it “allows polygamy, so that the faithful take no more than four wives; who all enjoy the same rights, having each a claim to the caresses of the husband in turn.” If “one of these wives follows amorous intrigues,” her husband “gives her up to the gallant, and takes to himself another.” Furthermore, “the loss of virginity before these proper preliminaries [marriage] being reckoned a great reproach, a young husband who does not mind secrecy on this, on not finding the testimonials thereof the next morning, or by pretending not to have found them, may by this means obtain an augmentation of the dower from the parents.” Finally, Georgi noted that “sterility is a great disgrace to a wife, especially when the husband has more than one; in that case, the barren woman is always despised by those who have children.”⁴⁶

This is not to imply that Georgi ignored venereal disease, but it was only a minor concern if mentioned at all. For example, the Ostiaks “have a flattish face of a pale yellow colour, harsh hair of a deep colour, a thin beard, a dull understanding, and a phlegmatic temperament; consequently, they are timorous, superstitious, and lazy, dirty and disgusting; but tractable, mild and a good-hearted people.” Despite their phlegmatic temperament in a cold environment, the Ostiaks did “enjoy a good state of health, but as soon as old age obliges them to stay within doors, they are much afflicted with the scurvy, the itch, and inflammations of the eyes…. The venereal disease is very common with them. In every kind of disorder, as soon as they fell themselves affected they burn their skin till it cracks; to produce this effect they use a fungus found on the birch-trees, which they call yagbani” (figure 5.2). Applying a local cure to treat venereal diseases was a humoral solution to the problem. Similarly, the Kirghiz enjoyed a “manner of life, simple, natural, and except from care, joined to the pure air of their vast and open deserts, preserves them from divers diseases, and numbers of them arrive at an extreme old age, hearty and full of vivacity. The indispositions to which they are most subject are the itch, coughs, and agues. Some are attacked by venereal disease.” In Georgi's description, both the Ostiaks and Kirghiz reached an advanced age despite these common diseases, which indicated that the earlier anxiety about procreation and venereal disease was unnecessary. The only disease that Georgi suggested endangered the empire was smallpox, which “made great havoc amongst” the Ostiaks and committed “great ravages” to the Kirghiz.⁴⁷ Because Georgi wrote his narrative after Catherine's inoculation program began, his text arguably highlighted progress against syphilis, which did not cause serious issues in his narrative, and smallpox, which did but was being addressed.

Figure 5.2. Georgi's illustration of an Ostiak man hunting an ermine. “Finskie narody: Ostiak na lovle gornostaev,” Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. New York Public Library Digital Collections, accessed June 9, 2024, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-c182-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.

In southern Russia, a temperate climate appropriately produced more active men and women, with some becoming sanguine or choleric. The “warm climate” of the Caucasus featured people who engaged in commerce, and those in agriculture produced crops for the market. The Kalmyks were “a mixture of sanguine and phlegmatic, the melancholy is seldom uppermost. They have a good understanding, and a quick comprehension, … [are] sprightly, hospitable, ready to do kind offices, active and voluptuous.” As a result of their healthy temperament, they knew “but little of sickness.” A group like the Baraba Tatars reflected the challenge of the cold, whereas other groups from the southern climes avoided their implicit weakness. The Bukharans, for example, enjoyed a “fine climate no less favourable to Venus than to Bacchus. A man tolerably at his ease takes two wives, and several have three or four. It is not, therefore, without reason, that both sexes use an infusion of salab [orchid root] as frequently as other nations take coffee. The invigorating and stimulating properties of that root are less equivocal in Bougharia than they are in colder regions. They roast them at the fire, then reduce them to a powder, and, after having poured boiling water on them, they drink the infusion with sugar exactly as we take coffee.”⁴⁸ For Georgi, the connection between environment and sexual activity was clear.

Any analysis of lifestyle applied to the cold peoples of Russia, or the few hot peoples in the far south, fell apart in the eastern regions of the empire. The division between the European Laplanders and the Asian Tatars failed to accommodate the mixed peoples of Siberia and Kamchatka. The Tungus, for example, were of a “very sanguine constitution, frank, and always appear to be what they really are…. They feel no disquietude about the morrow, but chearfully divide the last morsel with the first comer, and the gaiety of the conversation is never diminished by the indigence of the host.” Their sanguine temperament was not without its flaws, of course, as they could fly into a “rage” over “the merest trifles.” According to Georgi, “These nomads, hardy, sober, active, free from care, are acquainted with few diseases, and have none peculiar to themselves, yet they never live to a very advanced age.” He argued that the cause of death was most often “the scurvy, from want of that exercise which they have continually been used from their infancy. A several small-pox has now and then appeared among them.”⁴⁹ Russian authorities would have likely preferred to avoid further mentions of the endemic nature of scurvy and smallpox, the two diseases most often mentioned in the empire, but this also reflected the mixed bodies of the Tungus (figure 5.3). Their complexion was sanguine, but they still suffered from the most famous cold disease of all, scurvy. The disease was predictable based on their environment and diet, but it was also proof of the difficulty of fitting these specific people into a restrictive system—either Linnaeus's taxonomy or traditional humoral assessments.

Figure 5.3. Georgi's illustration of a Tungus man. “Mandzhurskie narody: Tunguz v okhotnichem plat’e s tyla,” Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. New York Public Library Digital Collections, accessed June 9, 2024, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-c1a8-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.

Georgi's “Kamchadals” also offered contradictions. Explicitly relying on Steller's history of Kamchatka, Georgi noted “their immoderate lust proceeds even to bestiality; and the men, contrary to the custom of other eastern nations, make themselves the voluntary slaves of the women to gratify their lascivious desires. Pederasty is practiced almost publicly.” The cause of this wantonness was “their daily use of half-rotten fish, fish-roe, rancid fat, and onions; but especially to their excessive indolence.” The Kamchadals were an “eastern” people who were “strong and healthy,” which were hot qualities. Like the Tungus, however, it was scurvy that plagued them. Unlike the Tungus, they also suffered from endemic venereal disease, which Georgi assured his readers “was known to them before the Russians arrived.” But, more troubling, “they formerly inoculated their children for the small-pox, by scratching the face with a fish-bone dipt in variolous matter. As this distemper made no appearance for a number of years, they neglected this salutary practice, when in 1758 it was unluckily brought there by a soldier, who had been a long time cured of it. This scourge of the human race then raged in so dreadful and fatal a manner, that it swept away two thirds of the nation.”⁵⁰ His assessment on the diseases served as a response to Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche, as the Russians may have introduced smallpox, but were not responsible for its consequences as the Kamchadals had already abandoned inoculation. Nor had the Russians introduced venereal disease. Although this depiction might have served the government's interests, it did not alter the confusing bodies and climate of Kamchatka. Were these people European or Asian, hot or cold? What did it mean to be mixed?

The confusion over the possibility of mixed peoples reflected Georgi's description of the Buriats, who like the Kalmyks, were both “the sanguine and the phlegmatic.” Georgi's view is appropriately full of contradictory qualities. The Buriats were “much indolent, and at the same time too great lovers of a wandering life…. They experience but little sickness or diseases, yet, for all that, they but seldom attain to the age of threescore years.” The main challenges were smallpox, from which “great numbers die,” but the Russian government recently established a new smallpox clinic in Irkutsk to inoculate them. They also were “acquainted with the venereal disease” and were frequent sufferers of “the itch,” but this resulted from “their lazy and dirty way of life, and their hot fur-clothing.”⁵¹ The positive and negative qualities were presented in quick juxtaposition. This may have reflected their position between the Russian Empire and China, producing a mixed quality not seen in the empire at large. Another possibility is that because Georgi did not travel to the far eastern regions of the empire before writing his text, his reliance on earlier texts to classify this group could have created a dissonance from his otherwise distinct separation of humors and climates within the empire. For the Kamchadals, Georgi willingly relied on Steller, but for the Buriats, he never identified his informant.

Georgi's exhaustive description aspired to be a complete view of all imperial subjects, but he was not the only naturalist on the expedition. Pallas's description of imperial subjects was not as lengthy, but it drew on similar notions of cold peoples in the north, hot in the south, and it accepted some division between European and Asian bodies. At the southern edge of the empire, for example, Pallas was a great admirer of the Kalmyks, whom he described “as affable, hospitable and honest; they like to render service; they are always cheerful and gay, which distinguishes them from the Kirghiz [of Siberia], who are phlegmatic.” As nomads, however, the Kalmyks did have some weaknesses, particularly “uncleanliness, which arose from their lack of education.” Pallas later provided ample evidence of the Kirghizes’ phlegmatic nature, as he observed that they commonly suffered from colds, asthma, heart palpitations, and venereal disease, all linked to coldness (figure 5.4). He also noted a lack of evidence that the Kirghiz suffered from fevers, although this was a common problem among the “warmer” Kalmyks.⁵²

Figure 5.4. Georgi's illustration of a Kirghiz man on horseback. “Tatarskie narody: Kirgizets na kone,” Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library, New York Public Library Digital Collections, accessed June 9, 2024, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-c190-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.

Pallas's expedition was both a summative process, compiling all the views of the German naturalists from the previous decades, and a formative one, highlighting Russia's imperial achievements and outlining necessary interventions for further improvements. Georgi had a deep interest in increasing the size of the population; investigating marriage and birth rituals, sexual activities, and the pervasiveness of venereal diseases; and identifying the leading causes of mortality for every group in the empire. This process underscored the persistent challenge of scurvy, smallpox, and syphilis across the empire. Georgi not only noted those places where the state made inroads to controlling smallpox but also revealed how limited those efforts were across the empire. As the Second Kamchatka Expedition's records did, this information provided ammunition both for Russia's advocates and its critics. The extensive details about mixed peoples, who were neither European nor Asian, however, challenged Linnaeus's classification schema. Russia's contribution to human taxonomy was to complicate its categories, at a moment when European ideas of race as a fixed category were influencing colonial decisions in the Atlantic world.⁵³ Highlighting the ways in which Russia's imperial subjects were exceptional served as a critique of the taxonomic system that had become increasingly dominant.

Institutional Improvements

Following the successful conclusion of Pallas's expedition, it was once again time for the academy to celebrate its achievements. Pallas's third and final volume from his expedition was published in 1776, and later that same year it was the fiftieth anniversary of the Academy of Sciences. At the end of 1776, the academy held a congratulatory jubilee with all the court's dignitaries. Grand Duke Paul and his new wife were in attendance, and a series of speeches were offered in their honor from both the director and secretary of the academy. In addition, “His Imperial Highness & the King of Prussia were inscribed Members of the Academy and several Natives and Foreigners of great Eminence in different Branches of Knowledge were likewise received into that learned Body. Medals struck upon this Occasion, and a new Map of the Russian Empire, were presented to their Imperial Highnesses.” Three days later, on January 1, 1777, “there was a brilliant and numerous Court in the morning when the foreign Ministers had the Honour of paying their Compliments to the Empress, and the Members of the Academy of Sciences were presented to Her Imperial Majesty.”⁵⁴

Arguably, the academy and its members had notable successes in the fifty years of its existence. The plague arriving hard upon the heels of the smallpox inoculation campaign beginning did not undo Russia's progress in terms of improving the empire's health, but Russia's critics were not silent. There is no doubt that Britain and its diplomats continued to protest, but, as always, they kept their complaints among the diplomatic corps rather than as public knowledge. French philosophes, however, continued to depict Russia as a demonstration of failure. The economist Marbault, for example, argued that the Russians were continually endangered by the “poor food and excessive cold,” which added to the “physical deprivations of poverty, servitude, and the violence employed to force them work” produced rampant scurvy, which the use of the bania failed to cure. Russia's only chance for success was that Russian women were “the most fertile” in Europe, regularly having “ten children.”⁵⁵ When Georgi published his multivolume Russia in 1779, the extensive details on birth rates among all groups in the empire responded to Marbault's claim, but there was no question Russia's critics still pointed to reproductive shortcomings and endemic diseases as evidence of Russia's inability to manage its subjects and climate.

Russia's Academy of Sciences and its College of Medicine continued to strive to improve health outcomes for the population. It is true that both the Second Kamchatka Expedition and Pallas's expedition highlighted the endemic nature of scurvy, syphilis, and smallpox in Siberia. With Dimsdale's inoculation campaign begun in 1768, the state would make inroads against one of these diseases, but the others remained uncontrolled. The academy was continuously gathering information for the treatment of scurvy, but there was yet no single fix to this classic cold illness. The state's agents, however, had barely addressed venereal disease. As a result, developing a therapy for treatment of this ongoing threat allowed Catherine's government to formulate at least one response to the negative publicity that followed their pandemic eruptions.

In 1776, the academy published its first text on the treatment of the “French Pox” (frantsuzskaia bolezniia) by S. A. Venechanskii.⁵⁶ Venechanskii explicitly linked the importance of this text to the state's demographic concerns, as noted at the beginning that “the first to be infected by this disease are childbearing women.” At the same time, from a modern perspective, it is not always clear which disease Venechanskii believed the French disease to be, as he observed that it had “varied symptoms, affects different parts of the body, and is known by many names.”⁵⁷ This is not to be critical of his knowledge, debates were ongoing across Europe about syphilis and the other venereal diseases. On the positive side, he took a broad view of the possible origins for the disease, its transmission, and its symptoms, providing information for potentially diagnosing a wider array of ailments than might be expected. Approximately one-third of the text focused on the various remedies that could be prepared for the disease (or diseases), with more than twenty options, although most involved some amount of mercury, including in two “Neopolitan” salves and one attributed to physicians in Venice.

Venechanskii's text was not the only information available to Russia's physicians. Two years later, A. G. Bakherakht published On Immoderation of the Passions of Both Sexes (1778). His central argument was that successful childrearing should instill moral fiber to prevent venereal disease.⁵⁸ The majority of Bakherakht's work was on the health of Russia's navy. Venereal disease was primarily a military issue rather than a demographic one as in Venechanskii's work, so the different solution to the issue was not simply a moral versus medical one. These two texts, however, are the only Russian-language ones that addressed venereal disease in the eighteenth century, and thus Russia lacked the array of medical opinions on the subject common across Europe. For comparison, more than three hundred pamphlets and books on venereal disease were published in Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.⁵⁹ This fact, however, fails to account for the reality that the overwhelming majority of physicians in Russia were either German, British, or Russian Empire-born and German educated. Therefore, these physicians had access to both German and English-language texts on the subject. Venechanskii and Bakherakht's texts in Russian were part of the turn toward making more information available to surgeons and apothecaries, moving potential treatment for venereal disease to a broader group than just the specialist, foreign-trained physicians.

The College of Medicine was no less invested in improving the health of the empire than the academy's specialists were. In particular, the college made an investment in increasing the number of hospitals providing care in the major cities. When the English minister and traveler William Coxe visited the empire in 1778, he was impressed with these institutions. The one receiving his greatest appreciation was the Foundling Hospital in Moscow. Its fame had been established by its escape from infection during the plague earlier in the decade. When he visited, it held three hundred orphans, although it planned to hold eight hundred. Coxe was impressed by its overall efficiency. All children were welcomed, and immediately registered and baptized. Then “the child is first visited by a surgeon before it is carried into the house: it is new-clothed, and given to a wet nurse, there being always a certain number attending for that purpose. A wet nurse never suckles more than one child.” The children were managed by age and ability throughout their years in the hospital. Before the age of seven, all of the children were kept together to “learn to read, write, and cast accounts.” After that, they were kept in separate wards, where the “boys are taught knitting; they occasional card hemp, flax, and wool, and are sooner or later employed in the different manufacturers.” Separately, “the girls learn to knit, net, and all kinds of needle-work. They spin and weave lace; they are taught cookery, baking; and are employed in house-work of all sorts.” After fourteen, both boys and girls worked different rooms to learn particularly trade skills, including embroidery or furniture construction, and then they were finally released at twenty in expectation they would be able to support themselves.⁶⁰ It was providing twenty years of “support” that most impressed Coxe, but for thirteen of those years, the orphans were actually supporting themselves in this workhouse.

Coxe also admired Moscow's Imperial Hospital; it had been established by Peter the Great as Russia's primary medical facility for injured soldiers. It was a brick building “in a very airy situation,” with two main wards for 120 patients each, which were long and broad and had high spaces. One was designated for patients with fevers, and the other for “chiefly scorbutic and wounded.” It also held special rooms designated for venereal patients. “The chambers for venereal disease were in outhouses; one room with seventy-five beds contained seventy-three patients.”⁶¹ It was clear that the venereal patients, kept in small rooms outside the main facility (“outhouses”), were not considered to be a part of the wounded and ill in the public spaces of the hospital. Although Coxe mentioned several other hospitals in Moscow, none of the others contained a separate space for venereal patients, suggesting venereal disease was a problem for its soldiers, at least in terms of hospital care. It should not have been a surprise that of the three primary spaces for patients at the hospital, two were focused on treatments for scurvy and syphilis, the primary health challenges still confronting Russia.

Coxe believed that Russia's hospitals were first-rate institutions, but he was equally impressed by the care provided in Russia's prisons. His descriptions demonstrated the influence of the general health improvements achieved during Catherine's reign. Coxe expected evidence of “epidemical distempers” among Russia's prisoners, “but could not hear of the least tendency to such disorders.” The absence of disease was a result of an effective regime imposed on the prison system. Coxe noted that “care that is taken not to over-crowd the jails; the custom which prevails of suffering the prisoners to go occasionally to the baths; the first of the prisons, which in general are built in airy situations, and almost always provided with court yards, where the prisoners are allowed to walk in the day-time.” In winter, preparations were taken to mitigate “the intense cold which continues for several months together; the quass, a fermented liquor, which is reckoned a fine antiscorbutic; it is the general drink, in Russia; an rye-bread, which is also deemed a great sweetner of the blood, is their principal food. Add to this the custom of smoking the wards by burning juniper branches and berries.”⁶² This health regimen was a combination of lessons learned on the treatment of scurvy (particularly kvass) with the fumigation methods developed during the plague. Coxe's comments about the prisons demonstrated that the Russian government was capable of successfully implementing its solutions to its recent health struggles.

Although visitors such as Coxe praised Russia's accomplishments, the men working for Russia were no less active in documenting Russia's health interventions. One of the most prolific men writing on the topic was a Scottish physician, Matthew Guthrie, who had a long career in Russia. Guthrie was born in Edinburgh in 1743 and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1762 and 1763. Guthrie was appointed as a surgeon for the Admiralty during the Russo-Turkish War (1769–1774). By 1778, he became the chief medical officer to the Land Corps of Noble Cadets, which was a position he would hold until his death in 1807. He also became a member of Russia's Free Economic Society in 1778 and a member of the Royal Society of London in 1782. though he was not a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, his scientific work involved experiments conducted alongside Pallas and Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin.⁶³

As was the case for many of his contemporaries in Russia, Guthrie maintained an active correspondence with his colleagues in Europe, and his preferred topic was the cold climate and the endemic diseases resulting from exposure to that climate. In a letter published in Medical and Philosophical Commentaries in 1777, the University of Edinburgh's medical journal, he discussed local remedies for “arthritical disorders” and rheumatism, both of which he revealed as being widespread throughout Siberia. The residents of Siberia relied on a tea brewed from Rhododendron chrysanthemum, as “discovered by my learned friend Professor Pallas” (figure 5.5). The treatment was simple, as Siberians “take about two drams of the dried shrub, stalk and leaves, with nine or ten ounces of boiling water, and putting them into an earthen pot, they lute on the head, and place them in an oven during the nights. This infusion, for it is not allowed to boil, the sick man drinks next morning for a dose.” Its effects were immediate: “It occasions heat, together with a degree of intoxication, resembling the effects of spirituous liquors, and a singular kind of uneasy sensation in the parts affected, accompanied with a sort of vermiculation, which is likewise confined to the diseased parts. The patient is not permitted to quench the thirst which this medicine occasions, as fluids, particularly cold water, produce vomiting, which lessens the power of the specific.” Guthrie was optimistic about the benefits. Although he warned “that the dose which these hardy Siberians take, who are also in the habit of drinking it as tea, would, in all probability, be too strong for our countrymen; however, it is a medicine which we may certainly give with safety, beginning with small doses.”⁶⁴

Figure 5.5. Pallas's illustration of Rhododendron chrysanthemum, from his Flora Rossica (1784–1788). “Rhododendron chrysanthum; P’ianishnik chernogriv,” Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library, New York Public Library Digital Collections, accessed October 11, 2024, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-e84e-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.

The following year, in 1778, Guthrie published his first letter in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, once again promoting Russian therapies for a cold disease, but this time highlighting scurvy. Guthrie's interest was in understanding how Russians avoided illness, particularly that “they must undoubtedly have sunk under the scurvy, as they are, for the greatest part of the year, exposed to the influence of those pre-disposing causes to putrid complaints that make the body of the Greenland seamen livid.” As Guthrie noted, physicians still accepted that “bad air within, excessive cold without, joined to a want of fresh vegetables for a length of time” that caused putrefaction within a body, producing scurvy as its inevitable outcome.⁶⁵ Despite the conditions for illness, scurvy was largely unknown among the Russian peasantry.

Guthrie's conclusion was that peasants developed a lifestyle designed to overcome the cold climate. It first began with a diet rich in antiscorbutic foods: sour cabbage, kvass, rye bread, and salted cucumbers. These “acidulous” foods prevented putrefaction within the body. Furthermore, Russian peasants developed “some customs” that “probably have their share in effecting” putrefaction; “these are their cloathing, baths, and manner of sleeping.” Guthrie felt the clothing was perhaps the most important, with “many plies of coarse flannel, … sheep skin coats, and nothing is left open to the action of the air but the face and neck, which last although never covered, yet coughs and sore throats are seldom heard of.” Their healthy manner of dress was supported by regular use of the bania, where Russians “wash away with aqueous vapour, and afterwards with water in its condensed state, the dirt that by obstructing the pores is so well known to promote putrid diseases, at the same time that they most effectually open the cuticular emunctories, and throw off any obstructed perspiration that might otherwise acted as a fomes to begin the septic process in the body.” Ultimately, the bania's pore cleansing was supported by the peasant habit of sleeping on top of their stoves, which induced sufficient daily perspiration to undue the effects of being in a cold climate. If, however, peasants were kept “from the nocturnal luxury of their oven, and you [would] kill them in a week.” Guthrie concluded his letter with a warning for his fellow foreigners living in Russia: They must abandon their “European” habits for “the experience that a succession of ages has taught the natives” about the proper way to mitigate the consequences of the climate.⁶⁶

Guthrie's letter was followed in that volume of Philosophical Transactions by another physician with a career in Russia, Charles de Mertens. By 1778, however, Mertens had left Moscow's Foundling Hospital and was a professor of medicine at the University of Vienna. The same year he published his plague tract, he analyzed the treatment for scurvy, once again drawn from his career in Moscow. Mertens agreed with the conventional wisdom that scurvy was a continuing challenge for ocean voyages because of sailors’ reliance on salted foods, but he commended recent experiments with mitigating the dangers with a diet that included sauerkraut. Although he did not question its effectiveness, he argued that “at Moscow, many gentlemen merchants and strangers were attacked by a slow scurvy, having their gums soft, swollen, and blueish, the breath strong, and many scorbutic spots at the legs, whilst it was rare to find among the lower people, either of town or country” despite the foreigners regularly eating “a soup made of sour cabbage, exactly resembling the German sour-krout in every thing.” After years of observing this mystery, Mertens concluded that the Russians “were indebted for their safety to the great quantity of raw greens, such as onions, leeks, raddishes, turnips, peas in the pod, and others, which they eat. The berries of Vaccinum, which others much resembling them, called kloukua, which are of the size of a small cherry and very acid, are together with applies, strawberries, and raspberries, almost the only fruits of these countries.” During a large scurvy outbreak in the Foundling Hospital during the winter of 1771, Mertens implemented this fruit and green vegetable diet, and the children rapidly recovered. In this therapeutic choice, Mertens more closely followed Steller's advice from the Second Kamchatka Expedition than Guthrie's recommendation. Mertens was explicit that the bania made little difference, because the Russians’ lifestyle was “extremely nasty” compared with the “people of fashion.”⁶⁷ Although Mertens wrote far less admiringly of Russians’ health, he was no less impressed with the Russians’ success in adapting to their environment.

Before the end of 1778, a former British resident of St. Petersburg published a pamphlet on the climate that supported Guthrie. It was written by John Glen King, who was a fellow of the Royal Society of London and had been the chaplain of the Russia Company for a decade. King's observations on the best methods to moderate the influence of the cold climate resembled Guthrie's view. King argued that while Russia's coldness was “severe, … it is seldom that any body suffers from it, so easy are the means and so plentiful are the provisions to guard against it.” According to King, the solution was “the method of warming the houses by an oven constructed with several flues, and that the country abounds with wood, which is the common fuel.”⁶⁸ King also mentioned that Russians were “cloathed so warmly they bid defiance to frost and snow,” again agreeing with Guthrie's conclusions.

King added a new element to the discussion. He observed that while Russia may have been extremely cold, “the wind is never violent in winter, and in general there is very little wind,” saving Russians from exposure to “cold that is exceedingly piercing.” Therefore, even if “the winters seem long and tedious in these northern climates,” Russians’ enjoyment of snow “makes even this much more tolerable to the natives, as well as their happy ignorance of better climes.” King was far kinder about summer weather, noting that then conditions “differ much less from southern climates.” Even “some persons [who] reckon the light nights in summer an agreeable circumstance,” benefiting from “so great a brightness one may see to read and write at midnight, unless it be cloudy, for full two months.”⁶⁹

The following year, Guthrie published another letter in Philosophical Transactions, perhaps responding to Mertens's implication that the Russians’ lifestyle was unhealthy, not only from the climate but also from their small houses, which were dominated by a large stove. Guthrie's letter discussed how Russians recovered from inhaling “the Fumes of burning Charcoal” throughout the long winter. “Russian houses are heated by the means of ovens; … a number of billets of woods are placed in the peech or stove, and allowed to burn till they fall in a mass of bright red cinders; then the vent above is shut up, and likewise the door of the peech which opens into the room, in order to concentrate the heat; this makes the tiles of which the peech is composed as hot as you desire, and sufficiently warms the apartment.” The stove, in turn, releases a vapor that places a person “into so sound a sleep that it is difficult to awake him, but he feels (or is sensible of) nothing.” If this person has been “suffocated” by the vapor, which “seldom affects a Russian,” a “recovery is always attempted.” The patient is carried outdoors, and laid in the snow, “with nothing on but a shirt and linen drawers. His stomach and temples are then well rubbed with snow, and cold water, or milk is poured down his throat. This friction is continued with fresh snow until the livid hue, which the body had when brought out, is changed to its natural colour, and life renewed; then they cure the violent head-ach which remains by binding on the forehead a cataplasm of black rye bread, and vinegar.” Guthrie did not offer any conclusion about whether or not the vapor was dangerous to the lungs or the circulatory system, as “I shall leave that to your investigation.” He only commented that “it is so common a case here that it is perfectly familiar to them [the Russians], and they never call in medical assistance.”⁷⁰ Whereas Mertens suggested Russians remained healthy despite their lifestyle, Guthrie remained far more optimistic that the Russians had successfully answered the challenges of their lives in this cold climate.

Guthrie would remain more important to the Russian medical and scientific establishment than Mertens. After all, his career lasted decades in St. Petersburg, whereas Mertens left for Vienna. Visiting Guthrie became a necessary stop for newly arrived British men in Russia's capital. Samuel Bentham, for example, arrived in Russia in the spring of 1780, carrying a variety of letters of introduction. One of those was for the British consul to Russia, Walter Shairp, who immediately introduced Bentham to Guthrie “not as a Physitian, … but as a friend. In a day or two Dr. Guthrie came, I found him a Man of very clear Ideas perfectly acquainted with all the Physical Knowledge pursuing at present in England; a frequent correspondent with Priestly, Magellan, and other England Philosophers, and a Man of Inventive Genius himself. I was however able to communicate to him some new Ideas which I pick’d up in my way, and which had not had time to reach him by way of England in a regular Course.”⁷¹ As Bentham hoped to launch a career in Russia working for the navy as an engineer, Guthrie provided an introduction to the secretary of the Admiralty and sponsored him for membership in the Free Economic Society, “here as it is a Society very much respected and I believe is very little if any expense; I shall certainly like it.”⁷²

Two weeks later, Bentham returned Guthrie's visit and was again impressed by Guthrie's knowledge. “I carried him some Books which were new to him as well as those he had lent me and brought back a few of his which were new to me; his House is filled with Subjects of natural Phillosophy. His Rooms were hung round all sorts chemicals in particular; He seems to have a compleat apparatus for Experiments in Airs; I shall probably get some Tables from him as will he perhaps one or two from me.”⁷³ Later that week, the British envoy extraordinary presented Bentham to Catherine the Great and then followed that presentation with an introduction to Peter Simon Pallas at the Academy of Sciences.⁷⁴ These introductions facilitated Bentham's employment in the Admiralty, where he worked to improve the strength of timber used in shipbuilding. Within a year, the College of Manufacturing would hire him to inspect all mining operations throughout Siberia.

Men like Samuel Bentham justified the faith the Russian government placed in them. On his Siberian odyssey, he not only managed his assigned task but also gathered evidence to respond to Russia's critics. When traveling between Ekaterinburg and Nizhnii Tagil, for example, he noted: “The land about here is by no means unfertile, whatever the Abbé Chappe may say to the contrary. I saw yesterday some very promising crops of Corn, and all the ground which I saw cleared of wood produces something: when nothing is sown, there comes up a fine thick high grass.”⁷⁵ Bentham sent this comment to his well-connected brother Jeremy in London in June 1781. Bentham was both familiar with the Chappe d’Auteroche's infamous text and dismissive of its claims upon his arrival in Siberia. His observations were relevant not only to his employer, the College of Manufacturing, and the British residing in St. Petersburg, like Guthrie, but also among members of the Royal Society in London. This combination of personal and professional networks continued to provide benefits for the empire's reputation.

The personal networks operating in St. Petersburg remained as small as ever, placing trusted men into key positions. Guthrie not only attempted to influence the view of Russia's management of its empire in British publications but also facilitated the employment of other British men into elite positions, not unlike how Peter the Great's physician, Robert Areskine, had done at the start of the century. Without doubt, the plague's arrival in Moscow in 1771 was a setback for Russia's international reputation as an innovator for health, but it quickly returned to business as usual. The state built new hospitals, hired more specialists, and promoted new therapies to redress its disease burden. It supported an active intervention to improve imperial health.

These ongoing improvements did not mean the Russian Empire had resolved all its health and population concerns. A small outbreak of the plague in the fall of 1780 once again raised an alarm. The British envoy extraordinary wrote to the foreign secretary in London, “Though it is kept here the most profound Secret, I can assure your Lordship that the Plague has broke out at a small Town formerly called Oel-Ecatherinskoy, situated in that Part of the Empire called Non-Russian on the River Bog, where the Frontiers of these Dominions of Moldavia, and of Poland, join.” Although the envoy had concerns of exposure to the “dreadful Distemper,” he confidently concluded, “the Coldness of the Winter will prevent its extending itself Northward.”⁷⁶ As the plague did not become a widespread epidemic in 1781, his prediction was accurate, even if his reasoning was flawed. In fact, the absence of any further mention of the outbreak is a testament to the Russian government's successes since the devasting outbreak of 1771.

The state's employees in the Academy of Sciences and the College of Medicine worked to alter the criticism by highlighting their successes or even, as Guthrie did, Russia's peasants’ ability to thrive in their extreme environment. In 1781, Catherine the Great invited Thomas Dimsdale to return to St. Petersburg, this time to inoculate her grandsons, the future tsar Aleksandr and his brother Konstantin. This posed another opportunity to draw attention to the medical interventions ongoing in the empire. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the event was anxiously watched by the British ambassador, as Britain's reputation was linked to Dimsdale's public role.⁷⁷ The princes were inoculated the last week of August at the palace: “There is as yet no appearance of the Distemper, but from their sound constitution, and very fine Season, there is little doubt of their doing perfectly well.”⁷⁸ By the middle of September, both were recovered, though the court remained riveted by their mother's concern. As the ambassador noted, “The Young Great Dukes are now perfectly recovered of the Small Pox; The Eldest has had a very full distemper, and alarmed a good deal of the maternal affection of the Great Dutchess; the Other had a very slight Eruption.”⁷⁹ The celebration for the success of the operation was highly public and ended with another award for Dimsdale, who “received from Her Imperial Majesty a gratification of ten thousand Pounds Sterling, two thousand pounds Sterling for his Journey backwards and forwards, and His Lady a diamond Ring of near One Thousand Pounds value.”⁸⁰ At a time of diplomatic tensions between Britain and Russia from Britain's ongoing Atlantic wars during the American Revolution, Dimsdale's successful procedure and public acknowledgment would certainly have been a relief for Britain's diplomats. Following the setbacks to Russia's reputation from the outbreak of the plague and the equivocal evidence from Pallas's and Georgi's expedition, Dimsdale's success only highlighted the government's commitment to defeating smallpox, which, even in 1781, was still quite progressive compared with most European countries. There were undoubted benefits for both Russia's and Britain's reputations.

The empire's health care steadily improved from the investment in public interventions, but everyone remained aware of the dangers of Russia's climate. Visitors to the empire could easily observe both positive interventions and the intemperate climate on a single trip. Dimsdale's wife, Elizabeth, who accompanied him to Russian on the 1781 journey, did exactly that. In her diary, Elizabeth carefully noted the progress of her husband's latest patients, Aleksandr and Konstantin, with admiration for the treatment and concern at all levels of the palace. She also included some concerning observations about the climate. “It was during the Months of December, January and February, usually from 8 to 15 or 20 degrees below 0 that is from 40 to 52 degrees below the freezing Point: tho commonly in the course of Winter, it is for a Week or ten days some degrees lower.” It was sufficiently cold, that it would be “difficult for an Inhabitant of our temperate Climate, to have any Idea of a cold so great.” To Elizabeth, the dangers were obvious, as “Drivers who sit on their loaded Carriages, are sometimes found frozen to death in that Position” at such temperatures. Even worse, “it is not unfrequent in the course of a Winter that some poor wretches getting drunk with Spirituous Liquors, fall down the road side, and perish before any one finds them.”⁸¹ Note that Elizabeth was only in Russia during the summer, so her knowledge of cold came from a particular source, her traveling companion, John Glen King. King's publication on climate may have argued that Russia's peasants could survive and thrive in these conditions, and yet Elizabeth's understanding of Russia from King, as recorded in her diary, suggested the opposite. King's publication was part of the public discussion about Russia's climate, but Elizabeth's diary revealed how difficult it was to shift the everyday experience of living in Russia, even for its most vocal advocates.