M.I. Astvatsaturov - the founder of the biogenetic concept in the domestic clinical neurology (on the 140th anniversary of his birth)

Creative and life path of M.I. Astvatsaturov is exceptionally multifaceted: a fully educated physician and a surprisingly modest and intelligent person; a remarkable clinician and excellent medical teacher; a deep and original scientist and the owner of virtually absolute musical ear; the founder of the national military neurology, a connoisseur of high poetry and classical music of Russian composers. However, the top of his diverse creativity, which brought him fame far beyond the borders of the country, was the formation in the domestic neurology of a new and original scientific direction - biogenetic (evolutionary) analysis of polymorphic clinical phenomena in diseases of the nervous system. I. Ja. Razdolsky argued that «the most original and vivid direction in the development of neuropathology, not only in Leningrad, but also in the Soviet Union over the past 40 years was the introduction of M.I. Astvatsaturov’s evolutionary method in the analysis of clinical phenomena». The first publications on the problematic subject, which served as «the key to understanding a number of phenomena in the pathology of the nervous system, which before had not explanation...», date back to 1913-1916 after M.I. Astvatsaturov’s three-year scientific trip to the best European clinics and laboratories in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Munich, Vienna, Paris, London, Zurich and work for outstanding neurologists and psychiatrists - G. Oppenheim, L. Edinger, M. Nonne, Erba, E. Krepelin, Z. Freud, J. Babinsky, J. Dezherin, P. Marie, V.Manyan, V. Horsley, K. Monakov. Especially widely and vividly the diversity of opinions and scientific hypotheses were presented within the framework of the Astvatsurov’s biogenetic concept in clinical neurology in terms of the formation and improvement of motility, the clinical manifestation of pathological reflexes.

M.I. Astvatsaturov, pathological reflexes, biogenetic concept, motor skills, protective reflexes, grasping reflex, emotions, frontal cortex degeneration