Анализ и синтез в российской физиологии XIX столетия

Доклад на Международном итало-мексиканском симпозиуме «Душа, мозг и тело», 18-19 сентября 2000 г., Таско (Мексика). Есть области науки, особо отмеченные вкладом русских ученых в их становление и развитие. Понимание взаимосвязи между телом и разумом, пожалуй, и есть та самая, замечательная страница в истории науки, осененная «гениальным взмахом русской научной мысли» [1] и завершившаяся созданием учения о высшей нервной деятельности.

Analysis and synthesis in the russian physiology at the XIX century

There are some fields of science in which the Russian contribution is absolutely remarkable. The understanding of the relationship between mind and body is that very page in the History of Medicine. The Russian scientists were the first who had found the way for the experimental studies of brain psychological activity. Ivan M. Setchenov's treatise «Reflexes of brain» (1863) and 'Setchenov's inhibition' opened by him in 1860s, for the first time in the history, laid the physiological bases for the experimental investigation of psychological processes. A discovery of conditioned reflexes of the brain by Ivan P. Pavlov and his classical investigations in the field of digestion were awarded with a Nobel Prize (1904). A doctrine on higher nervous activity worked out by Pavlov became a fundamental base of the modern physiology and experimental medicine.