120 years of “life” after the prominent physician’s death – the only such case in world science
No country with an embalmed body of its leader (e.g., Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, or Kim Il Sung) can boast such a long period of effectively preserving a human body after death as Ukraine. The remains of a prominent scientist, surgeon, teacher, and public figure by the name of Mykola Pyrohov (1810-81), are in a better condition than the mummy of Vladimir Lenin, so there is no need to inter it. He lived in Vyshnia, near Vinnytsia, since 1861 till 1881. In 1866, he built a small mansion, a hospital, and a drugstore. He kept up medical research and practice till his heart beat its last.
September 9, 55 years ago, a state [currently national] house-museum was opened in Vyshnia. Pyrohov made no mention of embalming his body in his will, but asked to be buried at the place. His wife Oleksandra had him embalmed, although the idea may have belonged to her husband.
Shortly before his death (November 23 – or December 5 by the New Style – 1881) he received a monograph written by David Vyvodtsev, a noted surgeon and embalmer in St. Petersburg, born in Vinnytsia. It was titled Embalmment and Methods of Preserving Anatomical Specimens. The author described an embalming technique using a liquid containing different proportions of alcohol, thymol, glycerol, and distilled water. It suppressed bacterial activities in the body and retained its dimensions.
Evidence of its effectiveness was the embalmment in St. Petersburg of the remains of the US and Chinese ambassadors for their transportation home. Mrs. Pyrohov’s notes show that her husband studied the monograph very carefully. He may have shared his impressions with her. Determined to preserve his body, Oleksandra ordered a special coffin in Vienna even during his lifetime, after receiving the Holy Synod’s permission not to inter the body after his passing, as required by the Christian rite. She also wrote to David Vyvodtsev, asking to embalm his teacher’s body. He agreed and, after Mykola Pyrohov’s death, arrived at Vyshnia where, on the fourth day, embalmed the body in the presence of a priest and a paramedic. After the embalmment he cut off part of the tumor. The specimen was histologically examined in Kyiv by Prof. Ivanovsky and positively identified as cancerous. When embalming the body, Vyvodtsev left the brain and internals (contrary to what would be done in the case of Lenin), removing the blood and filling the small and big arteries with the embalming liquid under pressure. Several days later, the body was transferred to the village church.
Where to keep the body? Mrs. Pyrohov solved the problem. A new cemetery was being laid out not far from their mansion. She paid 200 silver rubles for a burial site and built a family vault surrounded by a wall. Building the wall and the vault, and receiving the coffin from Vienna took almost two months.
The official funeral took place only on January 24, 1882, at noon. The weather was cold and gloomy, with a piercing wind. Still, the ceremony was attended by all of Vinnytsia’s medical and teaching community; all wanted to pay last respects to the brilliant physician and pedagogue. The open black coffin was on a platform. The body was clad in the black uniform of a privy councilor of the ministry of people’s education of the Russian empire, a title equal to the general’s rank. Four years later, the construction of the ritual St. Nicholas’ Church, with mourning red brickwork and an excellent iconostasis, was completed over the vault, designed by V. Sychugov, academician of architecture.
Until the museum was opened in 1947, the vault was tended and guarded by churchwarden Vasyl Sharlai. In 1945, the government decreed the formation of a house-museum and further preservation of the scientist’s remains. There is nothing permanent under the sun. Embalmed tissues age and wither, changing the body’s appearance. Pyrohov’s body was no exception. It was embalmed again under the supervision of a special committee presided over by Prof. A. Maksymenko. In five months the body was restored to its original shape and the process of decomposition slowed down.
It was the only case in world practice when a body was restored so effectively 65 years after death, staying in unfavorable conditions and without professional care. 5-7 years later the body was re-embalmed by a team of Vinnytsia scientists. Beginning from 1977, it was kept with the aid of Moscow’s center of biological structures tending the Lenin Mausoleum. Twice the center’s experts had the body brought to a laboratory in Moscow.
It was there that the damaged glass lid of the casket was replaced by a special bell glass. A glass sarcophagus was later installed in Vinnytsia (the mummy is still there). In addition to re-embalmment, the coffin’s interior was replaced by an anticorrosive metal one, the decor changed and the uniform restored. Now the sarcophagus was complete with special lighting
According to Prof. P. Shaporenko, M.D., Pyrohov Medical University of Vinnytsia, executive secretary of the CIS Council of Anatomists, the body would have been interred but for the thorough re-embalmment procedures carried out in Moscow. In 1994 and 2000, the mummy was re-embalmed in Vinnytsia, by a team of experts from the Moscow Center for Biological Structures. A specially equipped laboratory was set up in the city and now the mummy’s condition is monitored by a special committee chaired by Prof. Vasyl Moroz, M.D., rector of the Pyrohov Medical University. Only one act of vandalism has been registered in 120 years. The vault was burglarized in the early 1920s, the glass lid of the coffin was damaged and Pyrohov’s ceremonial sword and pectoral cross stolen. During the civil war, revolution, famines, neither the White Guard nor the Reds encroached upon the remains of the celebrated physician. During World War II, the body stayed in the vault and the Nazis left it alone, although the mansion was littered and many ornamental and fruit-bearing trees chopped down.
The great scientist and practitioner won international acclaim during his lifetime, saving thousands of lives during the Franco-Prussian (1870-71) and Russo-Turkish War (1877-78). In 1862, he rescued Giuseppe Garibaldi’s leg (the French and British doctors insisted on the amputation). Pyrohov’s name is borne by three medical universities – in Vinnytsia, Odesa, and Moscow. In 1995, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health and the Academy of Medical and Pedagogical Sciences initiated Pyrohov Readings.
– P.S.: The Day’s journalists visited the Pyrohov Museum and were amazed by the dedication and enthusiasm of the staff; given today’s laughable subsidies and other hardships, they manage to uphold the reputation of the national museum business. Perhaps young people traditionally taking the Hippocratic oath graduating from the medical school should do so not on the campus but in sacred places such as this museum.
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