This essay explores lesser-known members of the Russian court’s medical
community and the printed press to trace information on the working
environment, events and attitudes surrounding the ‘Great Russian
Asclepios’, Sergei Botkin. It first shows how the changing intellectual
atmosphere (from slavophilism to nihilism) affected the course of events
inside the sphere of court medicine when Nicholas I’s era turned into a
reform era. Then it demonstrates how Botkin and his fellow physicians
balanced their professional autonomy with their service to the central
state, reveals some of the medical community’s archetypes and finally
identifies the opposing medical forces around Botkin. Resisting
professional and political attempts at isolation and court intrigues,
Botkin really came to personify the main events of the era. The medical
community of the court is viewed here as a micro-cosmos of the
professional peculiarities observed elsewhere in the medical community
of Tsarist Russia.

© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine.