Irkutsk State Medical University

The Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education “Irkutsk State Medical University” of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation (hereinafter – IGMU) is the firstborn of higher medical education in Eastern Russia and one of the oldest higher educational institutions in Siberia. It was opened on August 26, 1919 in the form of a medical department at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Irkutsk State University. On January 20, 1920, the medical department was allocated to an independent teaching and administrative unit – the medical faculty of Irkutsk State University.

The elite of the Kazan Medical School stood at the origins of the Moscow State Medical University: Professor ND Bushmakin – the largest anatomist and organizer, the rector of the university; Professor N.T. Shevyakov, a world-renowned biologist; Professor N.T. Sinakevich – the surgeon of the first hand; Professor V.A. Donskoy – the founder of the Museum of Pathology and others. In the first year of the opening of the faculty, the departments of normal anatomy with the museum and histology with the laboratory, pathological anatomy, bacteriology, operative surgery and topographic anatomy with the museum, general pathology, medical diagnostics (propedeutics of internal diseases) began to function; . In 1921, departments began to function with clinics: obstetric-gynecological, faculty therapeutic and surgical with an X-ray room, propaedeutic and surgical with a laboratory, skin-venereal, eye diseases, nervous and mental diseases with an X-ray room, laboratory and library, physiological (now biological) chemistry with the laboratory. In the years 1922-1923 the departments of pharmacology and pharma chemistry, forensic medicine, odontology, infectious diseases, etc. are opened.

At the medical faculty in 1921, the Scientific Medical Society was organized, in which, in addition to the faculty members, practical doctors of the city and the region took part. In 1922 the Student Scientific Society named after I.I. Mechnikov under the guidance of professors A.A. Small, V.G. Shipacheva and O.I. Bronstein. Since 1923, the Irkutsk Medical Journal has been published. In 1925, postgraduate education was established. The first graduate students were S.N. Sinakevich, T.A. Larionova and E.L. Michelson. A major event in the life of the faculty was the organization and holding in Irkutsk of the first congress of doctors in Eastern Siberia (1924). The medical faculty of the university held a large proportion of human resources, scientific products and training. In 1928, the faculty numbered 24 professors, 46 assistant professors and assistants, 21 interns and 11 graduate students. From 163 scientific works published by the university – 40 works on medical topics. In 1929, a radical restructuring of higher education began in the country. Medical universities from the system of People’s Commissariat of Education were transferred to the branch Commissariat. By this time, and in the medfak, there was also an internal need for conversion into an independent unit. For this reason, in the spring of 1930, the medical faculty of the Irkutsk University became an independent institution and was transferred to the competence of the People’s Commissariat of Health.