Nikolai Burdenko, a renowned surgeon who fought in four wars, has died in Moscow.
November 11 1946 years
Nikolai Burdenko, a renowned surgeon and participant in four wars, died in Moscow.
Doctors can save the lives of 97% of the wounded. We hope that death from injury will become the exception, and that only death from accidents will remain. And that's what I dream of.
He was born in 1876 in the Penza province into the family of a clerk.
At the age of five, he attended a lesson at the local school without his parents' knowledge, but the teacher sent him home, saying, "You're too young." Burdenko sat by the school door every day, which won the principal's sympathy, and he was allowed to attend classes.
At 21, he entered the medical faculty of Tomsk University. He excelled academically, but was expelled for participating in student strikes. He received his diploma in Estonia.
In 1904, after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, he went to the front as a physician's assistant. He worked in the trenches, carrying the wounded out of harm's way, and was himself wounded. He performed surgeries, received the St. George Cross, and dedicated his life to military medicine.
25 wounded were lost near Mukden because the entire army had only one thousand wagons.
During World War I, he created a detachment of frontline surgeons. He performed brain surgery and went down in history as the founder of Russian neurosurgery.
After the revolution, he became the chief surgical consultant of the Red Army and organized the work of military hospitals.
He operated on the fronts of the Finnish and Great Patriotic Wars.
In 1944, Burdenko was appointed head of the commission to investigate the mass shooting in KatynUnder his leadership, a team of 75 doctors dissected nearly a thousand bodies of Polish prisoners of war raised from their graves, examined documents, and interviewed local residents who had been previously instructed and intimidated by NKVD officers.
The commission's conclusions were predetermined: the execution was carried out by the Germans.
After the war, the Soviet side tried to push this version at the Nuremberg Trials, but it was rejected.
Ultimately, one of the State Security Generals admitted that the commission had not lived up to the expectations placed on it.
Burdenko died after three strokes. He wrote his final report, on the treatment of gunshot wounds, from his hospital bed.
