Strazhesko, Mykola
Strazhesko, Mykola [Стражеско, Микола; Stražesko], b 29 December 1876 in Odesa, d 27 June 1952 in Kyiv. Internal medicine specialist; full member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences from 1934, of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1943, and of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences from 1944. A graduate of Kyiv University (1899), he worked under Vasilii Obraztsov in the university’s department of special pathology and internal medicine, studied in clinics in Paris, Berlin, and Munich, did research under Ivan Pavlov at the Saint Petersburg Military Medical Academy (1902–4) and wrote a dissertation on the physiology of the digestive tract, and worked in the clinic of internal medicine at Kyiv University. He was a professor at the Kyiv Women’s Medical Institute (from 1907; see Kyiv Medical Institute), Odesa University (1919–22), where he headed the internal medicine department, and the Kyiv Medical Institute (1922–36). He was a fellow at the Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1934–6) and the founding director of the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Clinical Medicine (1936, from 1952 the Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Cardiology).
Strazhesko published numerous works in clinical and theoretical medicine, dealing with angina pectoris, myocardial infarction, heart failure, rheumatic fever, and sepsis. He also prepared a classic manual on the physical diagnosis of abdominal diseases (1924). He described a number of symptoms associated with diseases of the digestive and circulatory organs, including the so-called cannon tone that results from heart blockage (1906). With Vasilii Obraztsov he gave the first clear clinical description of coronary thrombosis (1909), thereby enabling practicing physicians to diagnose myocardial infarction. In 1934 he proved the streptococcal etiology of rheumatic fever. With V. Vasylenko he proposed a classification system of congestive heart failure (1935). The founder of a school of Ukrainian internal medicine specialists, Strazhesko also contributed to the development of functional cardiology in the former USSR. His collected works were published in two volumes (1957).
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]