Hygiene. A branch of medicine that deals with the diverse influences of the environment on the health of humans, their life span, and capabilities for work. Hygiene aims to develop methods for preventing and combatting disease. It is especially concerned with the prevention of epidemics and communicable infectious diseases and, more recently, with health conditions in the workplace and home. It is closely related to other scientific disciplines, particularly physiology, pathology, bacteriology, epidemiology, clinical medicine, toxicology, ecology, and demography. The practical application of knowledge gained by the study of hygiene is called sanitation. Hygienic research constitutes an important basis for preventive medicine and has important implications for public health policy. It can be divided into several categories: communal (dealing with housing conditions), alimentary, personal, social, pediatric, labor, military, and others.
Hygiene is one of the most ancient sciences. During the period of Kyivan Rus’, the chronicles and other early texts, such as the Izbornik of Sviatoslav (1073) and Izbornik of Sviatoslav (1076), contained many tips for hygiene based on folk knowledge. The level of sanitary culture was quite advanced for those times. Various herbals and self-healing manuals (lichebnyky, zilnyky, travnyky), which were common in the Middle Ages, contained advice with regard to drinking water, personal cleanliness, preparation of meals, cleanliness of cooking and eating utensils, care of clothing and bedding, etc. The writings of Princess Yevpraksiia Mstyslavna (12th century) contain advice on the treatment of various diseases, the airing of rooms, bathing, nutrition, hygienic measures for children, and sexual hygiene. By the 16th and 17th centuries, a number of medical guides with instructions on hygiene were popular. From the 16th century, isolation of the infectiously ill was practiced. The first quarantine was established in 1740 near Kyiv.
In the 18th century, Ukrainian physicians such as Danylo Samoilovych, Nestor Ambodyk-Maksymovych, Ye. Mukhin, and Kh. Barsuk-Moisieiev, as well as Russian physicians such as S. Zybelin and M. Mudrov, made important contributions to hygiene and to the containment of epidemics in Ukraine. They also popularized the practice of disinfection and vaccination.
The development of the science of hygiene was accompanied by the introduction of legislation concerning sanitary practices. In Russian-ruled Ukraine these included decrees concerning the paving of city streets, the appointment of city controllers of sanitation, and the regulation of sanitary practices in the sale of food. In the 19th century, the frequent cholera outbreaks and other epidemics had a major influence on the development of hygiene. They prompted the reorganization of large cities and considerable advancement in the scientific study of hygiene. By the late 19th century, questions of personal hygiene and preventive medicine became secondary to general societal protection of health. Aspects of hygiene were researched and taught in the medical faculties of Kharkiv University and Kyiv University from their establishment in 1805 and 1834 respectively, while separate chairs of hygiene, among the first in all of Europe, were founded at Kyiv in 1871 and at Kharkiv in 1873. A major contribution to experimental hygiene was made by Viktor Subbotin, the first professor of hygiene at Kyiv University. He also authored a popular textbook on hygiene for students and medical doctors, and established a hygienic laboratory (1875). The first professor of hygiene at Kharkiv was A. Yakoby; he was succeeded by I. Skvortsov.
Beginning in the 1860s many zemstvo physicians did important work in the fields of sanitation and preventive medicine (see Zemstvo medicine). In the 19th and early 20th centuries hygiene and sanitation were not yet clearly differentiated. Individual physicians and associations often combined scientific study of hygiene with the development and enforcement of sanitary norms and considerable community involvement in the popularization of health care. In fact, most of the early chairs of hygiene at the universities were officially called chairs of hygiene and medical police or chairs of public health. This facilitated the definition of practical indicators and regulations for public health in the areas of communal health, labor, nutrition, and the like. Hygienists worked in close contact with epidemiologists, bacteriologists, and pathologists such as Illia Mechnikov, O. Bezredka, Mykola Hamaliia, Danylo Zabolotny, Grigorii Minkh, Volodymyr Vysokovych, and Volodymyr Pidvysotsky. Several important contributions to hygiene in this period were made by Ovksentii Korchak-Chepurkivsky, a former zemstvo physician who taught hygiene in the medical faculty of Kyiv University (after 1921 the Kyiv Medical Institute) from 1903 to 1934, and who held leading positions in hygiene at the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences from 1921.
The Revolution of 1917 and the succeeding struggle for independence (1917–20) caused a drastic decline in sanitary and hygienic conditions. After the consolidation of Soviet rule in Ukraine, hygiene, along with all other branches of medicine, came under the jurisdiction of the state. The reorganization of existing medical schools in the 1920s, and the establishment of new ones in several cities in the 1930s, greatly furthered the development of hygiene. In 1934–6 entire faculties of sanitation and hygiene were established in a number of medical institutes, with several chairs where various aspects of hygiene were studied and taught. Special attention was given to problems of labor and alimentary hygiene. In this period, important contributions to hygiene were made by Aleksandr Marzeev, head of the sanitary-epidemiological administration of the Ukrainian SSR People's Commissariat of Public Health (1922–35) and professor of hygiene at Kharkiv University and Kyiv University. He founded and headed (1931–56) the Ukrainian Institute of Communal Hygiene, which was primarily concerned with problems of housing and living conditions. This institute is now located in Kyiv and is called the Scientific Research Institute of General and Communal Hygiene. Research in hygiene is also conducted at a scientific research institute of alimentary hygiene in Kyiv and at four scientific research institutes of the hygiene of labor and prophylactic medicine (in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Kryvyi Rih). In the 1920s and 1930s several institutions of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR conducted research in hygiene, including the chair of hygiene and sanitation held by Ovksentii Korchak-Chepurkivsky. Much attention was given to medical statistics, prophylactic medicine, and epidemiology.
In Western Ukraine, the research and teaching of hygiene was limited before 1939. Organizations such as the Prosvita societies and the Vidrodzhennia temperance society did much to encourage hygienic measures, as did numerous physicians. In interwar Galicia, a branch of the Polish State Institute of Hygiene was established in Lviv. Research at this institute focused primarily on problems of bacteriology and epidemiology, as well as issues in communal hygiene.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ocherk istorii meditsinskoi nauki i zdravookhraneniia na Ukraine (Kyiv 1954)
Sorok let sovetskogo zdravookhraneniia (Moscow 1957)
Pliushch, Vasyl'. Narysy z istoriï ukraïns'koï medychnoï nauky ta osvity, 2 vols (Munich 1970, 1983)
Grando, Aleksandr. Razvitie gigieny v Ukrainskoi SSR (Kyiv 1975)
Gabovich, Rafail. Gigiena (Moscow 1977)
60 let sovetskogo zdravookhraneniia (Moscow 1977)
Heinrich Schultz
[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1988).]