Ambodyk-Maksymovych, Nestor

Ambodyk-Maksymovych, Nestor [Амбодик-Максимович, Нестор], b 7 November 1744 in the village of Vepryk, Poltava gubernia, d 5 August 1812 in Saint Petersburg. Physician, encyclopedist. Ambodyk-Maksymovych graduated from the Kyivan Mohyla Academy (1768) and the University of Strasbourg (1775), taught obstetrics in various teaching hospitals, and became director of the school of obstetrics in Saint Petersburg (1781). In 1797, at his initiative, a clinical obstetrics institute was established in Saint Petersburg. Ambodyk-Maksymovych was a founder of obstetrics and medical terminology in the Russian Empire, producing a number of medical studies, including translations. The most important were Iskusstvo povivaniia, ili nauka o babich’em dele (The Art of Swaddling, or the Science of Midwifery, 6 parts, 1784–6), Fiziologiia, ili estestvennaia istoriia o cheloveke (Physiology, or the Natural History of Man, 1787), and an encyclopedic treatise on medical botany (medicinal plants), Vrachebnoe veshchestvoslovie, ili opisanie tselitel nykh rastenii v pishchu i lekarstvo upotrebliaemykh (Doctor’s Lexicon, or a Description of Plants Used in Food and Medicine, 3 vols, 1783–5). He also compiled a Russian-Latin anatomy and medicine dictionary and a Russian-Latin-German botany dictionary.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]