Design for a medical service: Peter the Great's Admiralty Regulations (1722).

AFrER a long period of neglect the history of Russian medicine is at last beginning to attract the attention of Western scholars,' although so far most of the new interest has been shown by social historians who have been chiefly concerned with the effects of disease and of unsanitary conditions on the economic and social development of the Russian state.2'3 Indeed, the medical aspects of Russian history provide a rich field for the social historian, rich as regards both the nature and quantity of the available material and the diversity of possible approaches and interpretations. There is also ample opportunity in this field for the medical historian concemed with integrating the facts of the development of medical art and science in Russia into the global pattern of medical history. Because of the inadequate attention that has so far been paid to the evolution of certain branches of preventive and curative medicine in Russia, and not least by Russian medical historians, there is a real need at this stage for a careful examination and enunciation of the basic facts of the problem and for the formulation of primary conclusions. In the course of a recent study of the origins of industrial medicine in Russia4 it became clear that nowhere is this more true than in the earliest attempt to provide a medical service for the industrial worker in Russia: that organized by Peter the Great on behalf of his sailors and dockyard workers. This paper is devoted to a brief outline of the events leading up to the publication of Peter the Great's Admiralty Regulations of 1722, to a translation of the provisions of the Regulations relating to the medical arrangements for dockyard workers, and to an analysis of the derivation of these provisions. Those sections of the Regulations that apply specifically to the fleet at sea are not included. Although the Admiralty