Girshman, Leonard Leopoldovich

early years

He was born on March 13 (25), 1839 in Tukums, into a Jewish merchant family, which moved to Kharkov in the year of his birth, where in 1855 he graduated from the 1st gymnasium with a gold medal and entered the medical faculty of the Imperial Kharkov University.

After graduating in 1860 with honors from the university course, in the spring of 1862 he arrived at Heidelberg University to continue his studies. Here he got acquainted with the fundamental works of Helmholtz, who headed the university department of physiology, in the field of sensory physiology, the basics of the theories of color perception and accommodation; began to study the physiology of color perception.

In October 1863, he took the position of an assistant in an eye clinic in Wiesbaden, where he worked for 1.5 years. Then he returned to Heidelberg to complete his scientific research in the Helmholtz laboratory. At the same time he worked in the Knapp[en] and Pagenstecher clinics, as well as in the laboratories of R. Virchow, E. Brucke, E. Dubois-Reymond, A. Graefe. In 1865 he was elected a member of the Heidelberg Ophthalmological Society.

After returning to Russia in 1868, having defended his dissertation "Materials for the Physiology of Light Sensing", he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine and the title of Privatdozent in Ophthalmology at Kharkov University; entered service June 11, 1868. Since 1870 he began to teach a private course in ophthalmology; the course, according to his contemporaries, was taught in an apartment, since there was no separate room.

In 1872, he founded the first eye clinic in Kharkov and Ukraine - with only 10 beds, although there were a lot of patients and the clinic was always overloaded. His student, Professor D.N. Natanson wrote:

Leonard Leopoldovich had a large reception room with a simple interior: oak benches, stone floor. There was a common queue for everyone, and communication with everyone was exactly attentive. There was a queue outside as well. From hundreds of kilometers away, peasants came and came on foot, residents of cities from other provinces, often blind people came with guides, and sometimes whole groups of blind people. Patients came from the Caucasus, Turkey and Persia.

In 1874 he was elected an extraordinary professor, and in 1884 he became an ordinary professor at Kharkov University. In 1893 he was awarded the title of emeritus professor. Since December 22, 1889 - a real state councilor.

During the Russian-Turkish war, during the summer vacations of the university in 1877, he voluntarily went to the area of ​​military operations of the Turkish front, to study and treat patients.

In 1895, on the basis of the eye clinic, for which a two-story building was built in 1896, he organized the Department of Eye Diseases at Kharkov University, which he headed until 1905. In 1905, he resigned after a conflict with the Minister of Education, caused by the refusal of Professor L. Hirshman to remain as chairman of the disciplinary student court due to the illegal dismissal of students after student riots [1].

Accepted Lutheranism.

Girshman Clinic

Modern clinic building.

st. Mironositskaya.

In connection with the possible departure of Girshman from Kharkov after his resignation, a special committee was organized, headed by his friend, Professor N. F. Sumtsov.

At a meeting of the Kharkov City Duma on October 19, 1906, Sumtsov proposed a plan to build an eye hospital specifically for L. L. Girshman in order to keep a famous doctor in the city. In 1908, on March 25, in a poorly adapted rented building on the outskirts of Kharkov (Moskalevka district), a hospital named after Professor L. L. Girshman was opened - for 10 beds with an outpatient clinic. In 1912, the hospital moved to its own building, built in the Nagorny district by the architect L. K. Terven with funds raised by the residents of the city. In 1914, up to 100 people could be treated in this clinic at the same time.

At a meeting of the City Duma on March 11, 1914, Professor Girshman was elected an honorary citizen of Kharkov for exceptional services.