Matiushenko, Borys

Matiushenko, Borys [Матюшенко, Борис; Matjušenko], b 2 November 1883 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, d 25 March 1944 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Physician and civic and political leader; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1931. A graduate of Kyiv University, he was active in the Revolutionary Ukrainian party from 1903 and then in the Ukrainian Social Democratic Workers' party. As head of the Chief Medico-Sanitary Board under the General Secretariat of the Central Rada in 1917, he organized the health care system in Ukraine. During the Hetman government he was director of the health department. In 1919 he was a member of the delegation of the Ukrainian National Republic to the Paris Peace Conference and head of the foreign office of the Ukrainian Red Cross (1919–21). In 1922 he settled in Prague, where he headed the hygienics department at the Ukrainian Free University, and taught at the Ukrainian Husbandry Academy in Podĕbrady. He founded and headed (1922–35) the Ukrainian Physicians’ Association in Czechoslovakia and edited its medical journal Ukraïns’kyi medychnyi vistnyk (1923–5). He was a member of the Ukrainian Scientific Institute in Berlin and of the Czech Eugenics Society. He wrote articles on public hygiene and eugenics and coedited Martyrii Halyn’s Medychnyi latyns'ko-ukraïns'kyi slovnyk (Latin-Ukrainian Medical Dictionary, 1926).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]