CHAPTER 2Training Physicians, Exchanging Information

Boerhaave's Curriculum

The key figure for Russia's medical future was Herman Boerhaave, a professor at the University of Leiden's medical school. Of the physicians employed by the Russian state, the overwhelming majority were either trained at Leiden or at the programs established by students of Boerhaave in Göttingen, Jena, and Edinburgh, among others. Boerhaave's innovative curriculum at Leiden, therefore, was the core of Russia's medical education throughout the eighteenth century. Even once its influence began to wane as new ideas emerged, the paths to Russian employment from these universities remained. The principles of Boerhaave's curriculum were embedded in medical practice throughout the empire.

In the seventeenth century and earlier, physicians were educated as a separate profession from surgeons and apothecaries. There were far more of the latter group than the former at work in the empire.³ Although physicians held a university degree (doctor of medicine, MD), surgeons and apothecaries were skilled tradesmen who learned their craft after years of apprenticeships. Physicians also worked as apprentices, but the university degree remained a marker of distinction between the two groups. Before Boerhaave, as the historian of medicine G. A. Lindeboom observed, “Surgery was still a discipline not taught in many universities and often practised by illiterates, who did not understand Latin, the language of science, and who were often despised by the learned physicians.”⁴ The absence of surgery in a curriculum based on humoral precepts is logical. Rebalancing the humors within the patient did not take the physical manipulation of the body, but rather adjusting the nonnaturals (i.e., food, climate, activity, rest) to restore the original composition of the patient.⁵ Therefore, the inclusion of anatomy and practical experience, including training in surgery and work with patients in a hospital, in the medical curriculum at Leiden was a major innovation to the study of medicine. This change reflected the arguments of the iatrophysical school, focusing on the physical body. In the modern era, this idea seems patently obvious, but at the dawn of the eighteenth century, it was groundbreaking.

On the one hand, this change might have been a surprise. Boerhaave's predecessor in the chair of medicine at Leiden, Franciscus Slyvius, was one of the leading figures of the iatrochemical school.⁶ He was responsible for the construction of a new chemical laboratory in Leiden, and its inclusion in the curriculum. On the other hand, adopting both iatrochemistry and iatrophysical ideas was not the end of the innovations. Boerhaave began his career in Leiden as the head of the new botanical gardens, the study of which also entered the curriculum as some training in materia medica became essential to treat patients. With the Netherlands sitting in the center of a global empire, the new gardens at Leiden had plant specimens gathered from all corners of the Dutch reach.⁷ Rather than posit medicine as the study of a science with its foundation in classical knowledge, by the end of the seventeenth century, Boerhaave and his colleagues at Leiden had created a distinct curriculum that incorporated elements from all of the new ideas produced by natural scientists.

In the first two decades of the eighteenth century, Leiden's reputation positioned it at the pinnacle of medical schools in Europe. The curriculum it developed was based in the instruction of all medical sciences first, and then it expanded to include clinical teaching in an instructional hospital. It covered the traditional knowledge of the humors as well as recent innovations in chemistry, physics, and botany to produce a new kind of physician.⁸ It broke all traditions with the past by expecting physicians to have treated patients in person. This aspect of the curriculum reflected Boerhaave's respect for the work of the English physician Thomas Sydenham, who developed a new field of medicine known as nosology, or the categorization of diseases by symptoms.⁹ Although Sydenham did not emphasize the study of anatomy, or the reliance on traditional humoral remedies such as bloodletting and purgatives, his nosologic system emerged from observation, an experience that required clinical practice.¹⁰

By the late seventeenth century, nosology had emerged as a practical solution to a growing problem in medical theory. Endemic diseases situated within a community proved humoral logic; people experiencing the same places, food, and climate should experience similar physical reactions. Epidemics and pandemics, however, were difficult to diagnose and treat through traditional humoral medicine. Each patient had his or her own constitution, which reflected their personal balance of the humors and could be altered by food, the environment, or physical activity. But the question of how to explain the plague, consumption, or dysentery, which acted on large groups with different constitutions, and, as Sydenham argued, were connected to seasons and the climate remained unanswered. Humoralists might look to one nonnatural as a common cause—for example, spoiled grain might be experienced by an entire community causing a disease outbreak. As more epidemics were recorded covering greater territory and different environments, those likely causes seemed less probable. Criticism of the traditional system had led to other ideas about transmission vectors. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, certain diseases, including “syphilis, inflamed eyes, and the itch, and, less often, consumption, plague, and dysentery” were understood to be contagious, in other words, moving from person to person rather than caused by a humoral imbalance condition.¹¹ Teaching diseases from a nosological approach, however, allowed physicians to disagree on the cause of disease but agree on the symptoms and potential treatments.

Boerhaave did not reject any of the competing medical theories of the time, rather he developed a curriculum that could embrace humoralism, iatrophysics, iatrochemistry, and nosology to train physicians in practical applications of this knowledge. At Leiden, students listened to lectures, but they also worked in the chemical laboratory, the botanical garden, the anatomy theater, and even in the school's hospital treating patients. More than one historian has argued this diversity in disciplines was why Leiden became the leading medical school for students across Europe in the first half of the eighteenth century.¹² It was remarkably progressive and marked a significant break from the medical and scientific education of the previous century. Borrowing ideas from multiple medical theories was a practical solution to the growing issue of public health, but Leiden became the institution that formalized this catchall system for Europe.¹³

Boerhaave's accomplishments led him to become one of the leading figures of Europe in the first quarter of the century. He was sufficiently well known that Tsar Peter I Alekseevich (r. 1682–1725) visited Leiden to meet Boerhaave and tour the university on his second embassy to Europe. According to the Dutch journals Europische Mercurius and the Amsterdame Courant, Peter arrived in Leiden on March 28, 1717, and arranged to meet Boerhaave the following morning. Boerhaave gave the tsar a personal tour of the University of Leiden's library, its anatomy theater, and the botanical garden.¹⁴

Boerhaave's reputation extended well beyond his meetings with Europe's monarchs. His students established new medical schools across Europe, including in Göttingen and Jena, among other schools in Germany.¹⁵ Practical instruction alongside medical theory became the basis for the new medical curriculum. In Göttingen, for example, future physicians were required to perform “anatomical demonstrations to display their facility for carrying out dissections” before receiving their degree; a skill set that formerly was the exclusive domain of the surgeons.¹⁶ Four of Boerhaave's students, Drs. Andrew St. Clair, John Rutherford, Andrew Plummer, and John Innes, founded the new medical school in Edinburgh in 1726, becoming its first professors in practical medicine and chemistry.¹⁷ Following its establishment, Edinburgh's faculty trained the men who became the tsar's personal physicians into the nineteenth century. From that position, those men planned Russia's curriculum for its surgeons and apothecaries and influenced its hiring practices for those physicians who worked in the Academy of Sciences, the Russian army and navy, and in its major cities.

By the middle of eighteenth century, the medical curriculum across much of Europe was standardized following Leiden's example. It began with “anatomy and physiology, along with botany and chemistry; then general and special pathology, two subjects that taught the causes and classification of disease in general and particular, along with student of materia medica and their actions on the body.” This would be followed by hands-on experience, in “general and special therapy, clinical practice, the method for writing prescriptions, and specialized courses in surgery, obstetrics, and forensic medicine.”¹⁸ Even the comedic handbook for Edinburgh's medical students, A Guide for Gentlemen Studying Medicine, appreciated the diversity of topics. Botany, for example, must be studied so “no medical practitioner will choose to hazard his abilities being called in question by his ignorance of the principles of a science which is vulgarly believed to be necessary, and subservient to the study of medicine.”¹⁹ Despite the author's sarcasm, producing knowledgeable physicians may also have led to one of Edinburgh's innovations: By 1750, a course in midwifery was added as part of the practical skills required of its students.²⁰

Not all medical schools in the eighteenth century adopted Leiden's curriculum or its broad approach to medical science. In France, in particular, its schools resisted the incorporation of surgery and hospital visitations into the medical curriculum. As late as the 1750s, French physicians could graduate without ever treating a patient, and, in the first half of the century, French surgeons developed their own curriculum to support their continuation as a separate discipline from that of the physicians.²¹ Russia's preference for Boerhaavian-influenced curricula over the French model, therefore, provided Russia with physicians who had practical experience. It may not have only been the schools these men were trained in that was significant but also the actual training that was key to their hiring.

Practical skills were not the sole key to this curriculum, as the training in nosology, botany, and chemistry all highlighted the value of taxonomic approaches in the history of medicine. Nosology and its taxonomy were central to the relationship between Carl Linnaeus and Boerhaave. The historian Lisa Rosner suggested that Linnaeus “may well have believed that his nosological system described different species of disease,” even if other proponents of nosology were not as convinced.²² Evidence suggests that even Linnaeus may have believed himself to be Boerhaave's chosen successor.²³ With Boerhaave's implicit influence on Linnaeus, students of the Leiden school had a preference for the Linnaean system rather than the competing system of classification that became popular in France, as posited by Georges-Louis Leclerc, the comte de Buffon. Because of the different medical curricula in the early eighteenth century, each group of physicians promoted different classification systems, with Russia's Leiden-influenced group clearly in the Linnaean camp.

Buffon's system of classification was a viable alternative to the Linnaean system in the eighteenth century, even if the latter came to dominate in the nineteenth century. For many, Buffon's system simply seemed more logical. Buffon argued “that only species were truly natural and that all the other categories Linnaeus used—classes, order, genera—were imaginary constructs.”²⁴ His criticism was quite effective in the eighteenth century, which certainly raised doubts about the effectiveness of Linnaeus's system. Physicians and surgeons trained in France, therefore, may have shared an interest with their colleagues in the Netherlands and Germany in the classification of plants, animals, and peoples, but they applied a different set of principles to these groups. It goes too far to suggest that two separate classification schema were at work in the eighteenth century, as these men were in communication with each other, but different strands of identifying principles were familiar to graduates of these two sets of medical schools.²⁵ For this reason French physicians and natural scientists frequently relied on other French men to produce their classification tables, and German physicians and naturalists relied on other Germans who worked in the alternate system. The organizing principles were simply different.²⁶

The Russian state had a clear preference for students from Leiden and its associated universities and programs. Therefore, French physicians, and Buffon's classification schema, never held great influence among the Russian scientific community. Russia's view of its own empire was grounded in the work of Boerhaave, Linnaeus, and the men influenced by their work. Linnaeus had extensive contacts with botanists working in Russia throughout his career, and some of his students would work for the Russian Academy of Sciences.²⁷ It should not be a surprise, therefore, to note that few, if any, French physicians were working in Russia in the eighteenth century, even during the second half of the century when the University of Paris produced more physicians than any other institution in Europe. This is not to suggest that the men working for the Russian Empire were less well trained than those trained at a French establishment might have been, but rather to highlight that their educational background predisposed their familiarity for some practices more than others.

Russia's Practitioners

Medical practitioners in Russia were hired from one of two established tracks. From one track, university-educated physicians were generally trained in Europe and hired by the Russian state to practice inside the empire. Although many of the men in this group were foreign, dozens of men born inside the empire traveled to Europe for a medical education. These educated, formally trained practitioners in Russia were well familiar with the latest medical theories and therapies, and remained in regular contact with their colleagues in the West, frequently through their alma mater or its publications. On the other track, surgeons and apothecaries were typically trained and practiced at home in Russia, sometimes by working with Western medical professionals and sometimes not. This path should not be mistaken for a divide between foreign and Russian (or local) medical knowledge. This was one community of practitioners at work. Local medicines and drugs arriving in Russian markets from the countryside were as valuable to medical practitioners as those from abroad, and Russia's foreign medical community was often in search of local remedies for local diseases.²⁸ The Pharmaceutical Chancellery (Aptekarskii Prikaz) had a library of Western medical and scientific texts in the seventeenth century, but this did not mean that other forms of knowledge were neglected.²⁹ Wealth and access to medical treatment, however, did create a barrier for some. Peasants were unlikely to encounter Western-educated physicians, much less a Russian-trained surgeon, but urban residents of all ranks may have benefited from the diagnostic skill of local apothecaries.

Even at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Russia's tsars relied on Western, typically English, physicians for their personal treatment, but under Tsar Peter I Alekseevich, it expanded to include Dutch physicians. During Peter's first Grand Embassy to Europe, he observed medical procedures in the anatomical theater of Dr. Frederik Ruysch in September 1697 in Amsterdam.³⁰ After the embassy, Ruysch remained one of Peter's correspondents, and the tsar would also visit him in person in 1716 during his second embassy to Europe in addition to meeting Boerhaave at Leiden. During the second embassy, Peter finalized the arrangements to purchase Ruysch's entire scientific collection, including “animals, dried plants, and human anatomical preparations,” which were brought back to St. Petersburg to become part of the collection at the new Kunstkamera, which held Peter's cabinet of curiosities.³¹ Ruysch's collection was not the only Dutch scientific-material purchase during the second embassy. Peter also visited the apothecary Albertus Seba, having purchased Seba's collection of animal specimens the year before. Ruysch's bill of sale was signed by Seba and Dr. Laurentius Blumentrost, one of Peter's court physicians, and soon to be the head of the Kunstkamera and president of the College of Medicine.³² Blumentrost was a former student of Ruysch's, demonstrating the influence of this Amsterdam network on both medicine and natural science in Russia.³³

Nor was Blumentrost alone. Andrei Matveev, Peter's envoy to Amsterdam, hired Nicolaas Bidloo in 1702; Bidloo was another of Ruysch's former students. Bidloo arrived in Russia in 1703 to serve as Peter's personal physician and would establish the first medical training hospital in Moscow in 1706, complete with an anatomy theater and botanical gardens, which became the central office for training Russian surgeons.³⁴ In addition to the Ruysch connection, Bidloo was also a correspondent of Boerhaave, perhaps arranging the tsar's visit to Boerhaave and his botanical garden in Leiden in 1716. Some historians have suggested Bidloo's Moscow Hospital School was the first medical education institution established in the country, but surgeons had been trained in Moscow for more than half a century before Bidloo's new school.³⁵ It is more accurate to say that it was the first institution based on Boerhaave's methods in Russia. Its first instructors, alongside Bidloo, were all Dutch and German physicians, with the support of an apothecary and another botanist. It would take some years before the first hospital school gained influence on Russian medical practice. Although the school was built to house and train fifty students, it did not reach that number for more than a decade after it opened its doors.³⁶

The Dutch influence was strong, but the Russian government did not exclude other innovative practitioners in Peter's reign. Dr. Robert Areskine was a Scottish physician, who studied under the apothecary Hugh Paterson in Edinburgh for six years, and then completed his MD at University of Utrecht.³⁷ Areskine became a fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1703 and entered Russian service the following year. Within a few months of arriving in Russia, he was appointed both the head of Pharmaceutical Chancellery and as Peter the Great's personal physician. Before his death in 1718, he had also established the first library in the Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg. From his position of authority, he sponsored other Scots for positions in the Russian government.³⁸ After his first cousin, John Areskine, the earl of Mar, joined the Jacobite rebellion against King George I in 1714, there were calls on Dr. Areskine to protect other rebels with new occupations in Russia. Several of these men, logically, were physicians, and others served as surgeons for the army during the Great Northern War (1700–1721).³⁹ Dr. Areskine died at a young age in 1718, and much of his estate remained in Russia to support its new medical foundations. He bequeathed his disposable cash to the Moscow Hospital School to support Bidloo's enterprise, and his personal medical library was added to the collection in the Kunstkamera.⁴⁰ Both bequests contributed to the growing Dutch-Scottish influence on the medical establishment.

The Moscow Hospital School trained the majority of medical practitioners working in Russia, alongside the later foundations of the St. Petersburg and Kronstadt schools. These schools did not produce doctors of medicine, but rather podlekary (healers or medics-in-training). After a set term of service in the army, these practitioners would receive the title, and increased pay, of a lekar (medic). The curriculum in place at each school was the initial one designed by Bidloo for Moscow.⁴¹ Despite the significant numbers of Russian-educated surgeons, it would not be until the 1790s that the Moscow Hospital School would award its first MD. Therefore, even while most of the practicing surgeons in the empire in the eighteenth century were trained in Russia, the MDs at work in the empire were foreign educated. These Russian surgeons were trained in the latest Western techniques, but their position was subservient to those men trained outside the empire who held the rank of physician. Although the Leiden curriculum eroded the traditional divide between educated physician and trained surgeon in its practices, the Russian medical system maintained a version of this divide for most of the eighteenth century.

Any examination of the medical practitioners in Russia in the eighteenth century can hardly fail to note the empire's significant reliance on physicians educated abroad, most of whom were foreign but some were subjects of the empire who sought the medical training available in the West.⁴² Competing indexes offer different total numbers of the men at work in Russia during that period. I rely on historian A. B. Bogdanov, whose dataset included the fewest physicians of the various reconstructions, making his numbers the minimum size of the overall community.⁴³ Bogdanov identified 626 men working in the country during the century; of these, 387 (61.8%) were physicians (MDs), and 165 (26.3%) were surgeons or medics (chirug, lekar, or shtab-lekar). The remaining seventy-eight (12.5%) were part of the medical community but held a variety of posts; some were personal physicians (leib-medik), some were generically designated as doctors (vrach) but did not hold an MD, and others were assorted members of Russia's Academy of Sciences. This latter group included botanists and chemists who investigated drugs or translated works from abroad. Bogdanov's survey relied on state records as evidence, which did not account for all personal physicians for members of the elite, foreigners acting as merchants inside Russia with medical training, or any type of local healer who may have been in practice. Furthermore, even the recorded men may be considered to provide a low estimate of the total numbers of practitioners, because of the difficulty in documenting when these men entered service or were in practice. The Napoleonic Wars at the turn of the nineteenth century, for example, saw the sudden arrival of numerous new surgeons working for the Russian navy and army; it is likely, however, that some of these men had practiced medicine before 1800. More notably, Bogdanov identified more physicians than surgeons at work in Russia. If these numbers were fully accurate, and not a low estimate, Russia's medical community would be unlike those active in Europe, where, for example, “according to one estimate, for every university graduate in medicine in late-eighteenth-century Germany, twelve practical surgeons were in practice, along with an undetermined number of other healers.”⁴⁴

Even with these the caveats, 387 MDs working in Russia in the eighteenth century is a substantial group of trained experts at work inside the empire. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, only a handful of institutions in Europe could bestow an MD. Even some prominent institutions that would play a key role in the eighteenth century did not award degrees for several decades. The University of Edinburgh, for example, which trained most of the tsars’ personal physicians during the century, did not grant an MD until 1726.⁴⁵ In addition, many of the institutions that could graduate a confirmed MD awarded the degree to only a few men each year. Only a small number of schools graduated more than ten MDs per year at any point in the eighteenth century.⁴⁶ Therefore, even with Bogdanov's data providing a low estimate of Russia hiring approximately three new MDs per year for the century, even three physicians per year equated to the government hiring the entire graduating class of some of the smaller medical schools. Although historians have suggested Russia's medical establishment may not have been large, its membership is roughly concurrent with most states in Europe of that era.⁴⁷

The institutions that produced Russia's MDs make a broad list of most medical schools in Europe in the eighteenth century. Of the 387 men Bogdanov identified with an MD, all but 14 include the institutions granting their degree (see table 2.1).

In addition, the universities training these physicians did not steadily supply men to Russia across the century. In general, the institutions with the highest number of graduates at work in Russia (Göttingen, Leiden, Jena, and Halle) sent men consistently throughout the century. Moscow did not bestow this degree until 1791, so its seven MDs in the eighteenth century were not hired until the 1790s (table 2.2).

The notable absence from even a single physician hired from Paris is evidence of how thoroughly the Russian government avoided French-trained physicians. Leiden, under Boerhaave's direction at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was more important than Paris, but its status declined over the course of the century. It is clear from these institutions that Russia's preference was for men trained by Leiden, the schools associated with its curriculum (Göttingen, Jena, Halle, and Edinburgh among them), and generally for institutions in the German-speaking parts of Europe over those elsewhere. Scholars of the eighteenth century have suggested a close connection between France and Russia because of the commonality of speaking French for Russian elites, but Russia's medical establishment had far more in common with Prussia's College of Medicine, which drew extensively on physicians from Halle and Jena, than it did with any French institution.⁴⁸

French members of the Russian Academy of Sciences as well as French natural scientists accompanied one or more of the academy's expeditions during the century, but French physicians did not play a significant role in the medical community in Russia.⁴⁹ There are several possibilities why French physicians were unpopular in Russia, but perhaps the most convincing is France's distant relationship with Russia throughout the century. Russia's prominent trade partners in Europe (Britain, the Netherlands, and northern Germany) featured quite prominently, which at least suggests that the towns in which Russia had an established connection were far more likely to send men to Russia.⁵⁰ Another consideration may be the French rejection of broadly training its physicians, as surgeons were trained separately. The French reliance on Buffon's classification system may have been equally problematic if most of the medical community would have been trained in the Boerhaave-Linnaean tradition.

The Russian government did send its own subjects abroad to receive specialized training, including medicine. Sixteen men were sent to Leiden for medical training in the 1760s (the peak decade in the century), and twelve would receive their degrees. All of them returned to take positions in the administration, but not only as doctors. Those who did take medical positions became the first Russian-born men to become professors of medicine in Russia, according to historian Nicholas Hans.⁵¹ Petr Dmitrievich Veniaminov was born in Moscow in 1733, began his education in Moscow, but received his MD from Leiden in 1764, completing a thesis on “Uncovering Medical Homicide.” Upon his return to Russia, he became a professor at Moscow University. Semen Gerasimovich Zybelin was born in 1735 in Russia and began his education as a student at the Moscow Spiritual Academy.⁵² He later studied medicine at Konigsberg, Berlin, and eventually received his MD at Leiden in 1764 with a thesis on “Medicinal Substances, and Their Natural Diversity and Chemical Principles for Medical Use.” He became a professor of medicine at Moscow University in 1765. These Leiden students were not the only Russians trained abroad in this period. Aleksei Protas’evich Protasov, for example, was born in St. Petersburg in 1725, studied in a seminary in Russian in the 1740s, and joined the Academy of Sciences in 1750. Following that appointment, he went abroad to study medicine at Strasbourg, completing his MD in 1763 with a thesis on “Anatomic-Physiological Basis for the Action of Ingested Substances in the Human Stomach.”

The likelihood of Russian subjects who studied medicine abroad to return to the empire was quite high, but they were not the only men at work in Russia in the eighteenth century. Working abroad in the eighteenth century was an unusual choice. Physicians frequently worked near to their academic institutions, as it was easiest to study and work in an environment in which they would be familiar “with the local customs, religion, and dialect,” as well as cultivate useful contacts.⁵³ For the Russian subjects who studied abroad, returning home to an appointment eased this transition. It is more difficult to explain, however, those men born in the West who opted for careers in Russia. Studying in Jena, for example, and working in St. Petersburg, could be lucrative but would make returning home to Jena only more difficult. Many of the physicians who worked in Russia relied on their personal networks and connections for their positions.

Johann Amman reflected how successfully these networks could operate. Amman was born in Switzerland and received an MD from Leiden, before beginning his professional career in 1730 as the curator of Dr. Hans Sloane's botanical collection in London.⁵⁴ Sloane was a member of both Royal College of Physicians and the Royal Society, serving as president of both for lengthy terms. Aside from his positions, he was a well-known naturalist, with a correspondence network that spanned Europe and crossed the Atlantic.⁵⁵ Amman became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1731, and then entered Russian service as the curator for the Kunstkamera's botanical collection in 1733. Although Amman died young at age thirty-four, during his eight years in Russia, he forged a personal union between the Royal Society and the Russian Academy. Amman sent Sloane samples of minerals, seeds, and dried plants, as well as descriptions and illustrations of animals, to add materials from the Volga Region, the Caucasus, and Siberia to Sloane's collection, which famously became the core collection at the British Museum. Sloane also acted as a hub of connections, as he corresponded with naturalists and physicians across Europe. In his files, letters from Amman sit next to letters from Linnaeus and Boerhaave.⁵⁶

The Amman-Sloane connection proved pivotal in maintaining the relationship between the Royal Society in London and the Russian Academy of Sciences. Sloane regularly sent two copies of each new volume of the Society's Philosophical Transactions to Amman. Amman kept one for his personal library, and the second was presented to the academy's president for its library. Frequently, the texts were accompanied by seeds, sometimes those specifically requested by Amman and at other times seeds that Sloane thought would be of interest or potentially useful. For example, in a letter from March 1736, Amman thanked Sloane for the Transactions, as well as copies of a “Chinese Chronology” that would be donated to the library, and he requested seeds of two types of South American balsam trees, copaiba and tolu, and “true Ipecacuanha,” for his garden in St. Petersburg.⁵⁷ Amman also requested specific titles that were desired by various members of the Academy of Sciences, including Mark Catesby's Natural History of California, Florida, and Bahama Islands, The Whole Works of Walter Moyle, Esq.; William Petty's “A Treatise on Taxes & Contributions, shewing the Nature and Measures of Crown Lands, …”; and Dr. Martin Lister's Historiae sive synopsis methodica conchyliorum, a study of shells from the Caribbean.⁵⁸ Sloane made a successful book agent, arranging for the texts to be purchased in London and then delivered to St. Petersburg by members of the Russia Company, most often William Vigor, who regularly appears in the correspondence as a trusted friend of both men.⁵⁹

Although Amman trusted his former mentor, Sloane, as a reliable source of information, Amman did not blindly accept all the information the network provided. In particular, Amman remained skeptical of Linnaeus's new taxonomy system, objecting to Linnaeus's choice to sex plants, as other botantists did.⁶⁰ He wrote: “I have received lately from Dr. Gronovius at Leden some Systematical tables concerning natural History, composed by Dr. Linnaeus. His botanical tables are in my opinion more curious than useful & I doubt very much if any Botanist will follow his lewd method. Why does he not take his Systematical disposition of Animals from their Cuanus & Penis as well as in the plants, since those parts have the very some use in fructification, which is according to the Doctor's observations on the Regnum vegetabile, the chief vue the Creator had in producing them.”⁶¹ The criticism may be consistent with the views of Linnaeus's earliest iterations of the taxonomic system, and this reaction is why Linnaeus continued to produce revisions for a few decades. Although later members of the academy would be more receptive to the system, Linnaeus's first draft was not well received.⁶²

Amman's major scientific contribution while in St. Petersburg was his monograph on plants native to the “Tatarian, Siberian, & Davurian” parts of the Russian Empire. This work was illustrated with plates produced by the academy's engraver.⁶³ Although “several descriptions [were] made only from dry specimens,” Amman continued to make revisions while waiting for publication to be printed. In 1738, he had “received lately a pretty large parcel of Seeds, gathered near Samara on the river Wolga, & Olecminskoi & Kirensko Ostroy on the river Len, between Iakutsh & Irtusk” that he hoped to include, even if he did “not know as yet for the most part, what they are.”⁶⁴ Amman grew all of these specimens in his personal garden in St. Petersburg, as the academy was resistant to establishing one of its own. He remarked more than once that this was unlike the College of Medicine, which was currently enjoyed a revival of its gardens, not only in St. Petersburg but also in Moscow and Astrakhan.⁶⁵

There was widespread interest across Europe in Amman's botanical work, including from Linnaeus. Once Amman reached St. Petersburg, he and Linnaeus were in regular correspondence, sharing materials and texts on botany. Considering Amman's reaction to the first edition of Systema Naturae, it was occasionally uneasy, particularly in comparison to the far more cordiale letters Amman sent to his former mentor in London. When Amman wrote to Linnaeus the month after receiving the text, he acknowledged his receipt of it, but failed to mention his thoughts on its inappropriateness, despite sharing them a month earlier with Sloane.⁶⁶ The following year, a common associate in the Netherlands shared Amman's objections to sexing plants, leading Amman to apologize to Linnaeus for sharing his criticism of the taxonomy with the botanical community without informing Linnaeus directly of his concerns.⁶⁷

While Amman was among Russia's best-connected naturalists, he was not alone in sharing the ongoing scientific work across Europe. John Bell, a Scottish physician who entered Russian service in 1714, had a decades-long career in Russia, acting for the Russian and British governments at times. He was recommended for service by Peter the Great's personal physician, Robert Areskine. Shortly after arriving in Russia, Bell was dispatched on Artemii Petrovich Volynskii's embassy to Iran in 1716. Volynskii's mission was to negotiate a new trade agreement, but Bell's was to investigate medical practices in the Middle East.⁶⁸ Bell's success, unlike Volynskii's, resulted in him joining an embassy sent to China in 1719 under the direction of Lev Vasilevich Izmailov. By the 1730s, Bell was operating as a trusted member of the Russia Company in St. Petersburg, on occasion advising the British consul on economic matters.⁶⁹ Bell published a lengthy narrative of his travels to China and Iran upon his return to Scotland in the 1760s, including a discussion of medical practices in Iran and China as well as Russia's commercial interests in each region.⁷⁰ In his final years in Scotland, Bell acted as an intermediary in the botanical exchanges between Dr. John Hope, the head of the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh and fellow of the Royal Academy, and Dr. Peter Simon Pallas in Russia.⁷¹

Pallas was born in Berlin and was educated at Halle and Göttingen before receiving his medical degree from Leiden in 1760. In 1767, he became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and led a scientific expedition into Siberia to record new plants across the empire. Upon his return to St. Petersburg, he became Russia's leading botanist. It is no wonder that he was a desirable correspondent for John Hope, and Bell's intervention established a personal connection between these men. Nor was the Hope-Bell-Pallas connection isolated, as studying with Hope at University of Edinburgh became one path toward employment in Russia. This was the case for both Dr. Danila Iakovlevich Pischekov, who was born in Sloboda, Ukraine, and graduated from Edinburgh in 1784, and Dr. Iurii Aleksandrovich Bakhmet’ev, who was born in Moscow and graduated from Edinburgh in 1786.

Russian recruitment of its physicians from Europe fell into predictable channels of preferring the graduates from a few selected schools, which emphasized certain medical traditions over others. The legacy of Boerhaave's curriculum, which underlay the curricula at Edinburgh and Göttingen, was an integrated study of medical theory and practical experience in botany, surgery, and treating patients in hospitals. It is not a surprise that the Russian government revised its medical curriculum for its hospital training schools to follow this example. Doing so reinforced Russia's preference to recruit those men produced by the schools that shared a similar curriculum to their preferred institutions.

Professional Networks

During Peter the Great's reign, personal networks successfully brought trained professionals to Russia. Robert Areskine hired John Bell; Areskine and Bell were both trained in Edinburgh before receiving their MDs on the Continent. Another example would be Dr. Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt who studied botany and medicine in Jena and Halle, the latter from which he received his doctorate in 1713. One of Messerschmidt's instructors at Halle was also a fellow of the Royal Academy in London, who introduced him to Robert Areskine, who in turn hired Messerschmidt to work at the Kunstkamera in 1718. Shortly thereafter, Peter the Great personally assigned Messerschmidt to investigate Siberian plants under the direction of Dr. Laurentius Blumentrost, Ruysch's former student.⁷² Samples that Messerschmidt sent to St. Petersburg from Siberia were occasionally dispatched to London by Amman, where Siberian plants still remain in the Sloane herbarium.⁷³ Messerschmidt, in other words, was perfectly positioned to prosper in Russia, with an immediate connection to both professional pools from which Peter's government hired. He also demonstrated the value of the universities in Jena and Halle, which came to dominate the ranks of Russia's physicians over the course of the century.

Shortly after Messerschmidt's arrival, new laws addressed the improvement of Russia's medical practice, with the outcome of reorganizing the older Pharmaceutical Chancellery to become the new College of Medicine, which supervised not only the old office but also the Moscow Hospital School.⁷⁴ In April 1721, as part of a broad bill affecting all of the Swedes in Russian service, the state required surgical and apothecary manuals to be translated into Russian to make the material readily accessible. In addition, practitioners were required to have the approval of the recently appointed head of the Kuntskamera and president of the College of Medicine, Blumentrost.⁷⁵ In August 1721, the Senate extended the college's reach to include supervising the purchase of all materia medica down to the district level, providing the new college the right to intervene in all medical practice in the country.⁷⁶ It was not clear if the new college would have had sufficient staff for this level of oversight, but in theory, Blumentrost's office was expected to confirm the quality of all medicaments available in Russia. Neither law comprehensively addressed the requirements for training staff nor set a curriculum of set topics. In fact, it recognized that Russia's surgeons and apothecaries were trained in country, whereas the supervising physicians were educated abroad. This educational background not only would divide the physicians from the other practitioners but also expected the surgeons and apothecaries to be trained in Russian, which was not required for physicians. Blumentrost's new position, including his extensive supervisory role, raised Messerschmidt's profile alongside his own.⁷⁷

Messerschmidt's career in Russia demonstrates how personal connections served state interests by promoting Russia as a center for research and its potential contributions to the work of early-modern naturalists and physicians. Messerschmidt was recommended to Areskine for Russian employment by Dr. Johann Philipp Breyne, who was fellow of the Royal Society and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Breyne had been proposed for Royal Society membership by Sloane in 1703. When Peter the Great's government dispatched Messerschmidt to Siberia to investigate its natural resources, the government took advantage of his findings and also established a route for promoting Russia's scientific work across Europe.

On Messerschmidt's expedition, he would travel as far east as Lake Baikal, gathering plants and minerals for further investigation. As a new arrival to Russia, much less its far eastern empire, Messerschmidt relied on a local network of experts to inform his investigation.⁷⁸ Although it is certain that both Russians and Siberians assisted the official scientific expedition, Messerschmidt also relied on information provided by a Swedish prisoner of war, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg, who lived in exile in Tobol’sk from 1711 to 1721. According to Strahlenberg's biographer, while in Siberia, Strahlenberg was in correspondence with Breyne in Germany, who likely provided an introduction for Messerschmidt.⁷⁹ Strahlenberg would later publish his own account of Siberia's resources upon his return to Sweden, but when these two men crossed paths in 1721 in Tobol’sk, their exchange of knowledge influenced Messerschmidt's investigation.⁸⁰ Messerschmidt died at a young age before he officially published any of his fieldwork, but his research still appeared in print, through the intercession of Breyne and Sloane.⁸¹

While Messerschmidt was still in Siberia on his expedition, Sloane published an article in the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions on a hotly contested topic for naturalists—that is, whether mammoth bones were the remains of ancient animals or a new type of naturally occurring mineral. In his “Account of the elephants teeth and bones found under ground” in 1728, Sloane began with a discussion of the tusk he had received from Bell and mentioned how “other Bones of the same Animal, that is, of the Elephant, are found in sundry Parts of Siberia to a considerable Quantity, and the Tusks and Teeth in particular, when less corrupted, are used all over Russia for Ivory.” In his article, Sloane offered no definite conclusion on the origin of the bones but had hopes that further research would prove that “these Bones are the Bones, and the Horns, … of Elephants drowned in the universal Deluge.”⁸²

Messerschmidt's fieldwork provided a potential answer for Sloane's inquiry. In 1738, Breyne published portions of Messerschmidt's notes and illustrations in Philosophical Transactions with Sloane's support. Breyne's conclusion was that Messerschmidt's research proved mammoths were elephants, agreeing with Sloane.⁸³ The agreement did not come as a surprise; after all, the connection between Breyne and Sloane was the reason Areskine hired Messerschmidt. These men were clearly in close contact. Equally important, Messerschmidt may not have lived long enough to see the results of his research published in Europe's leading journals, but this personal network fulfilled that project for him. Historians of science viewed this connection leading to publication as the operation of a “trust network” of correspondents.⁸⁴ Information was easier to accept if the original source was known as reliable; personal connections were best, but letters of introduction from trusted informants or contracts could forge new bonds. Information arriving from less familiar contacts were more suspect. Messerschmidt's advisor, Breyne, shared the informed the man who recommended him for membership in the Royal Society, Sloane. Messerschmidt did not have an opportunity to prepare the material for publication, but, having sent letters and notes to Breyne, the Royal Society published this material in Philosophical Transactions. The Royal Society regularly sent its publication to all of the scientific academies in Europe, sending Messerschmidt's observations on a remarkable journey—from Siberia to Breyne in Germany to Sloane in London to St. Petersburg's Academy.

Although Sloane and Breyne clearly valued Messerschmidt's contributions, not all members of the academy were as pleased with his fieldwork. Sloane requested Amman provide copies of Messerschmidt's notes so the material could be published in Philosophical Transactions, but Amman declined in 1739. Amman wrote: “I think it will not be worth while to have them [the notes] copied for you; since I have begun to draw out of them the most remarquables observations in order to publish them by degrees. This man is so prolix & tedious in his descriptions of birds & four footed animals, that there is a hardly any pin or hair, wch he hath not measured.”⁸⁵ Amman's death interrupted his plans to exploit Messerschmidt's information, but his objections demonstrated that sharing information was not a simple process.

Despite Amman's objections, the publication of a portion of Messerschmidt's notes was important for the Russian government. As the state increased its investment in both hiring foreign specialists and investigating its natural resources (albeit people, animals, plants, or minerals), this type of publication and its very public reception had value for Russia's reputation. The progress of Messerschmidt's work from Siberia to publication in London demonstrated the growing interest in Russia as a naturalists’ laboratory. For individuals pursuing careers in Russia, the process by which Messerschmidt, a German doctor, was hired and utilized by Russia, demonstrated how a career in Russia could advance an international reputation, even if Messerschmidt passed away before his work appeared in print. It should not be a surprise that during the 1720s, Russia established its own Academy of Sciences, as well as its own publication, Commentarii Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae. This was a logical step in supporting the establishment of Russia's scientific reputation, mirroring the apparatus established elsewhere, including in London.

By the 1730s, Russia's College of Medicine formalized the medical establishment; the Kunstkamera and the Academy of Sciences regulated the naturalists’ investigations. Each of these acts undertaken by the Russian government represented a significant investment of resources in an era in which the state scrambled for new economic opportunities. Peter the Great's reign with its substantial outlays for his decades of war and establishment of the new capital, among other projects, was a major setback for Russia's finances. Therefore, investing in science and medicine was not done solely in pursuit of demonstrating Russia's ability to lead scientific inquiries; it was increasingly apparent that damage to Russia's reputation was possible if Russia's experts did not lead these conversation. John Bernard Müller, a Swedish captain taken as a prisoner of war, lived in Tobol’sk in 1716. He later produced a memoir of his time in the Russian Empire focused on the populations of Siberia, who remained relatively unknown to Western scholars. He was intrigued by the prevalence of scurvy among the Ostiaks, who suffered from a general bodily rot “not much unlike a Leprosy.” Furthermore, he noted that the Ostiaks lacked “Self-preservation … to such a degree, that when any such Distemper appears either upon a Foot, the Back, or any other part of the Body, even the Face, they do not apply any other Remedy, but suffer the Corruption to spread till their very Bones are rotten, and the Disease ends with their Lives.” Muller believed the Ostiaks’ scurvy was the result of their lack of hygiene, poor diet, and general immorality, as seen in their “irregular Desires,” which led to “nothing but Licentiousness and Confusion.”⁸⁶ In the Russian Empire, immoral habits threatened the physical well-being of imperial subjects. The future of the empire depended on improving not only health but also customs and lifestyles.

Müller was not alone. Strahlenberg, the Swedish prisoner of war who acted as one of Messerschmidt's Siberian consultants, published an assessment of Siberia's people and resources in 1730, shortly after the establishment of the new Academy of Sciences. It was hardly unusual for visitors to Russia to publish an account of their experiences, or for those like Jodocus Crull, who had never been to Russia, to summarize others’ views. Strahlenberg's account, however, arrived after he served as a local consultant for a Russian-hired physician working as part of a state-planned scientific expedition. Russia, accidently perhaps, made Strahlenberg an expert, but one who most definitely was not on the state's payroll.

Strahlenberg's narrative aspired to provide a comprehensive view of the Russia's history, government, society, and geography, climate, and resources.⁸⁷ He had been a long-term resident in Siberia because of his exile, unlike men like Samuel Collins who had been a resident but never traveled beyond the Urals. Strahlenberg was clear from the beginning that he disagreed with earlier Russian descriptions. “Of the Climate of Russia several Accounts have been given in Books of Geography and Travels, But as the Ancients depended pretty much, on the Intelligence that got of Foreigners, and mostly from Hearsay only; And our more modern Writers, in this Point, as in many others, have blindly followed them, without any farther due Examination.” If the consensus from the seventeenth century was that Russia's extreme cold was its dominant feature, Strahlenberg dissented: “When they say, in general: Russia is very cold, and lies in a raw Climat, has longer Winters than Summers, and is, on Account of the vast Forests it contains, very little cultivated; Such general Accounts must not be look’d upon, as applicable to the whole Country.” Instead, Strahlenberg viewed Russia as having four climatological zones, from the northern taiga that was dominated by its cold winters to the southern steppe: “Countries have a very warm and temperate Air, and short Winters. The whole Extent of this Country is flat and even, has little Morass, is water’d by many Rivers, and abounds in Fish.”⁸⁸ Certainly, Strahlenberg's assessment of the empire as temperate broke with the earlier narratives’ depiction of Russia's extreme conditions.

Strahlenberg's positive description of the climate and conditions of the steppe became the first of several implicit, and at times explicit, critiques of Russia's management of its lands. In a section on Siberia, for example, Russia's failure was obvious: “As to the Rivers in Siberia, they have naturally a pretty good Communication with one another; So that it is easy to come from one into the other. However, there are two Places, which might with a little Labour be cut thro’, by which a great Circuit would be avoided in going to China, as well as to Mungolia; But few People living on those Spots, and not many coming thither, they have not been observed; And besides, Colonies must first be establish’d there, before such a Work could be undertaken.”⁸⁹ Siberia could be productive, “with a little Labour,” but Russia's failure to colonize the region left it wild and untamed, waiting for someone to exploit its potential.

And its potential was vast, as Strahlenberg documented in extraordinary detail in his remarkable chapter, “Of the most noted Mercantile and Fair-Towns, as also of the Mines, Minerals, Vegetables, Fossils, Curiosities, Antiquities, Manufactures, Fabricks, &c. in the Russian Empire, digested into Alphabetical Order.” In about one hundred pages, Strahlenberg summarized not only the animal, plant, and mineral resources of Siberia but also its Indigenous peoples, who were another resource waiting to be properly exploited by a more capable government. In this, he predicted much of the criticism waiting for the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century, especially from French physiocrats who highlighted Russia's inability to control its most valuable resource, its subjects.⁹⁰ Russia's failure with its non-Russian peoples were persistent, not the least of which because most remained “heathen Nation[s],” in Strahlenberg's parlance. One of those “heathens,” the Baraba Tatars, lived “between the Cities of Tara and Tomskoi” and were noted for their “Schamans.” The Russians failed to note the most basic facts about these Tatars, according to Strahlenberg: “Formerly they were one and the same Nation with the Ostiacks, on the River Oby, which both they and the Barabintzi told me, when I travell’d through their Country; The District where they live, the Russians, according to their bad Pronunciation of the Tartarian Words, call Barabu; But the Tartars and Ostiacks call it Barama.”⁹¹

The Iakuts were no more favorably depicted. “Jakuhti, Are a Pagan People, called so by the Russians; They are under the Russian Government, and live along the River Lena…. They have, besides, many superstitious Customs, in common with other Nations, which they celebrate about certain Trees, that they look upon to be sacred.” Not only did the Russians once again fail to correctly note the name of this group, who were “their own Tongue, Zinzacha, or Zinzogotock” but also Russia's experts made errors in describing them. “What Isbrand Ides (in his Travels, p. 132) relates, concerning these People, is all true; Excepting the Custom of burying alive, or killing the oldest Servants, or Favourites of a Prince, at his Funeral, which is abolish’d.” To prove his point, Strahlenberg detailed the history of the ritual execution and when it had been abandoned, well before Ides's travels in the 1690s. Even if the Iakuts had modified their “pagan” practices, there was little to commend about them. After critiquing their religious practices, society, and lifestyle, Strahlenberg assessed the humoralist necessities: characteristics and food. He wrote: “These people are very nasty; They seldom, or hardly ever, wash themselves; They will eat the Flesh of Oxen, Cows, and Horses, but no Pork, be they never so hungry; But then they never mind whether the Cattle be sick or sound; For they indifferently kill and eat it…. They eat Bread, when they can get it, but it is no usual Part of their Diet, because they neither Plough, Sow, nor Plant.”⁹²

Strahlenberg's detailed description of Siberia critiqued the Russian Empire's lack of influence over the Siberian population. Strahlenberg was no less critical of others who presented themselves as experts on Siberia. In particular, he rejected Sloane's analysis of mammoth bones, published in Philosophical Transactions, based on his communication with one of Russia's physicians, Bell. Strahlenberg's entry on mammoth bones argued he was the only possible expert on the topic: “I have taken a good deal of Pains, during my Travels, to come at some Certainty, with Respect to this Mineral, if I may call it so.” Suggesting that the mammoth bones could in fact be a mineral, raised the idea that these were not ancient remains, as Sloane theorized. Explicitly mentioning his connection to Messerschmidt, who observed whole skeletons, Strahlenberg allowed himself to be convinced these were animals, but they were not elephants from before the Biblical Flood as Sloane had argued. Instead, “these Teeth and Bones are of Sea-Animals, such as the Danes formerly us’d to bring from Greenland, and Iceland, and sell for those of Unicorns.”⁹³ When Breyne published Messerschmidt's notes in Philosophical Transactions in 1738, it was both a response to Strahlenberg's critique of Sloane and an attempt to validate Messerschmidt's authority.

The success of Strahlenberg's text, reprinted in multiple languages within a decade, demonstrated the demand across Europe for more information about Russia's Empire. A similar text, reputedly by another Swedish prisoner of war, would be published during this era. It appeared in Tatarie dressee sur les memoires originaux de Suedois prisonniers en Siberie (1737), and was edited and compiled by its Dutch publisher, Jan Frederic Bernard. The text was translated into English for a British edition by William Farrington the following year, although his translation remained unpublished.⁹⁴ Bernard published a series of travel narratives in the far north from 1715 to 1738, making this supposed Swedish account one of the final entries.⁹⁵ It is not clear whether Bernard was only the editor of the narrative based on unpublished Swedish narratives, or, if the entire narrative was a fiction. Following Strahlenberg's narrative, however, a “Swedish prisoner” in Russia had the appearance of a reliable source.

Bernard's volume offered a distinct perspective on the Russian Empire or, more specifically, “Grand Tatary,” the Eurasian expanse from the Volga River to the Pacific Coast. He offered an exceptional take on the region's geography, suggesting “this vast Country is under the finest Climate of the Universe, & of extraordinary goodness & Fertility, but as it is also one of the higher of the habitable World, it wants Water in Several Places.” Elevation and the arid quality of the land was a previously unknown version of Russia's Asia. Furthermore, this geography caused raised specific problems. The first was its climate: “This great Elevation is the cause that this Country seems very cold in comparison of others under the same Latitude, People of good credit have assured me on the spot that the north wind is there so penetraint even in the midst of summer that they must cover themselves well in the night not to catch Cold.” The second was more troubling: Russia's inability to support a sizeable population. Or as Bernard noted: “This great Elevation of Tartary is also the cause that notwithstanding all thos great Rivers which have their Rise there they want Water in several places, so that it cant be inhabited but in the neighbourhood of the Rivers & Lakes. Tis for this Reason also that there are so many desarts, but these desarts to which the Russes give the name of Stepp.”⁹⁶

In light of Russia's problematic geography and climate, Bernard assessed its populace as accordingly weakened. He wrote of the Tatars (all of the population between the Volga and the Pacific): “In general they love drink & if they are not perfect drunkards, its rather for Want of Opportunity, than for the Will, for as soon as they can get strong Liquors they never leave off drinking till they fall all along.” He was aware that many of Russia's subjects were Muslim, and therefore “by the duty of their Religion to take more care of themselves than the others, & tis for this, they say, that this Fault has been less observed” in the Uzbeks, Circassians, Crimean Tatars, and Baraba Tatars. Bernard noted, however, that this duty of care may not have been from strict adherence to religious precepts as much as “this proceeds more from the Climate which they first live in which is milder & more southerly; We see that the Northern People are naturally inclined to Strong Liquors, & that more or less according as they approach the North.”⁹⁷ It would be hard to suggest that Bernard did not have a fully developed sense of climate determinism, as in his survey, the climate above all else determined lifestyle. The remaining chapters of his study considered other groups still outside the Russian Empire, including the Bukharans and Mongols, and finished with an analysis of the Turkic languages being spoken across Eurasia. Unlike his antecedents, for Bernard, elevation became the persistent threat to the success of Russia's subjects.

Strahlenberg and Bernard demonstrated the potential danger of allowing narratives of the Russian Empire to be left in the hand of outsiders, including the men who had lived in the empire, but were not on its payroll, as well as the men who had never lived in Russia and possessed, at best, secondhand knowledge of its distinct features and peoples. The insiders, those employees of the state or the tsar, were crafting official narratives and describing its climate, geography, peoples, languages, and lifestyles, as well as its resources, such as animal, mineral, or plant, whereas the outsiders frustrated the official narrative with their own. This is not to suggest that everyone who worked for the Russian Empire was never critical of it or of the state's management of its resources. Amman regularly shared updates on current climatic conditions with Sloane, partially from his astonishment that Russia's extreme cold had not decimated the animal and plant populations. This extreme cold reached its peak in 1739, when it had “been so extraordinary in those regions that … I observed with 2 different Thermometers,” the temperature was below the level estimated where life could not be sustained. “Nevertheless, animals of all kinds have survived this cold. It is never good to draw consequences of things not yet confirmed by experiments.”⁹⁸ Amman had raised concerns about the extreme conditions earlier. In 1736, for example, St. Petersburg had suffered from the “most Severe weather … wch continued very near 3 weeks; several persons have been found frozen, others lost their Ears or noses.” The arrival of the Iranian ambassador with a gift of an elephant for Anna Ivanovna (r. 1730-1740) was delayed by the cold, with the government “oblig’d to make boots for him [the elephant], & [had] to cover him with cloaths, otherwise he had been frozen to death.”⁹⁹ Like many of his fellow foreigners in St. Petersburg, Amman also believed the climate was ultimately responsible for his declining health. In 1741, shortly before his death, he wrote in his last letter to Sloane, “Concerning my health, of wch you desire to be acquainted, I find it from day to day to decay. I can not bear this extremely rough & inconstant climate.”¹⁰⁰

The large medical community at work in Russia existed within overlapping networks of personal and professional ties. Family members frequently followed fathers or uncles into service. Leading figures in medical education sent several of their students to work in Russia once the network was established. The result of these connections was a communal view of the importance of practical medical education in Russia; a comprehensive system that involved iatrophysical, iatrochemical, nosological, and humoral theories, with the men appropriately practiced in treating patients and employing their knowledge of botany, chemistry, and surgery. Furthermore, and perhaps most important, this was not an isolated community in Russia, but rather one that was fully integrated with the medical institutions that trained these men in the Netherlands, Germany, and Great Britain. Some of these men were the hub of their own personal network, creating connections between Russia and the West. Others were dependent on their personal and professional correspondence to maintain these links, either discussing medical treatment and practice with extended kin networks or by publishing their studies in the leading scientific journals of that era, both in Europe and in Russia, to publicize their contributions to science.

Interest in the role of correspondence in the dissemination of early-modern scientific thought has been a growing area of study for several historians. Lindsay O’Neill has argued that for social historians networks were “webs of social support that undergirded the functioning of local societies,” while for historians of science “networks were more fluid, more fragile, and more geographically expansive. They were the product of a shared belief, need, or interest.” She has suggested combining the two approaches, because “the deeply entangled nature of the two” has not been explored.¹⁰¹ This idea had been suggested by other scholars as well. Roy Porter, for example, argued that “the locus of the English medical Enlightenment lay with the private, the individual, the local, the personal, the voluntary,” suggesting the need to look beyond professional networks to understand fully the process by which medical was disseminated.¹⁰² Margaret DeLacy agreed, arguing that for some medical issues, it was “the Royal Society that collected information on inoculation, debated it, disseminated information and technical advice, and ultimately initiated a successful campaign to put it into practice,” not the London College of Physicians.¹⁰³ As Thomas Broman suggested, even when physicians published debates over medical theories and treatments in their professional publications, “the audience for them consisted of that much broader, vaguely defined ‘public.’ As a consequence, the standard of argument conformed to the universally accessible canons of ‘reason,’ rather than being accessible only to a privileged clique of specialists.”¹⁰⁴

Therefore, both official and unofficial records exist of the dissemination of medical and climatological knowledge to and from Russia. Official communications include the articles on medicine, botany, and chemistry published in the Russian Academy of Sciences journal, Commentarii Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae, as well as the work of physicians and natural scientists working in Russia that were published in other academies’ publication, including the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London and medical school journals.¹⁰⁵ In addition to these scientific journals, many of the men at work in Russia published their research and observations in treatises, ethnographic and botanical studies of the empire, and even travel narratives. The outsiders, those not on the state's payroll, however, published as often about life in the Russian Empire. Perhaps inevitably, those other narratives presented damning assessments of Russia's inability to manage, much less improve, its resources. As a result, intentional or not, when the Academy of Sciences launched its first major scientific expedition, the Second Kamchatka Expedition in 1733, it was investing in an official narrative to counter the criticism from men like Strahlenberg and Bernard.

Caveats aside, a common medical and scientific understanding emerged of the Russian Empire in the eighteenth century. This understanding was based on the curriculum developed at Leiden and supported by Linnaeus's classification system. Selecting men who were trained in this curriculum and the Linnaean system had the endorsement of the Russian government. These foreign hires were not random choices, but rather were men recruited from specific schools. Information created and recorded by this group could be disseminated rapidly through a trust network. Although the Russian Academy of Sciences and College of Medicine were the central hubs of this network in Russia, the material produced by this group would also be published in Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, and Britain. The medical and scientific community of Russia was already fully integrated with Europe, at least for its educated elites.