The first medical institutions of the Turkestan region: stages of formation and features of functioning (the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the formation and development of the system of medical institutions of the Turkestan region in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Based on a wide range of archival materials obtained from central and regional archives, as well as published sources, the main stages of the formation of regional healthcare in the context of Turkestan's entry into the Russian Empire were considered. At the initial stage, medical care was mainly of a military-departmental nature and was associated with the organization of hospitals and hospitals at military garrisons serving personnel and limited categories of the civilian population. Next, there is the process of institutionalization of civilian healthcare, as a result of which outpatient clinics, paramedic centers and city hospitals for the local population have been created. Special attention was paid to the analysis of quantitative indicators of medical institutions, the dynamics of their number, bed stock and staff. The article examines the working conditions of medical institutions in unfavorable sanitary and epidemiological conditions, individual epidemics and a chronic shortage of medical personnel. Special attention is paid to the process of specialization of medical care and the emergence of primary specialized institutions - psychiatric, ophthalmological, infectious diseases. The study concludes that the healthcare system of the Turkestan region has become an important element of the social infrastructure and an important factor in the transformation of regional society.