KOSTIANTYN VASYLIEV
Odessa National Medicine University (Ukraine)
Inspector of the Imperial Vilnius Medical-Surgical Academy Karl Göhling (1805–1886)
Abstract
In 1834–1842, Karl Göhling (Rus. Geling) was an inspector at the Medical-Surgical Academy in Vilnius (then Vilna). Karl Göhling senior was a Lutheran and a subject of the Kingdom of Prussia. At the end of the 18th century, he settled in Moscow as a music teacher. He married the teacher Ridiger’s daughter. In 1805, a son was born from this marriage and like his father was named Karl. Therefore, in the Russian Empire, he was called Karl Karlovich Göhling (Карл Карлович Гелинг). In 1819, Göhling entered the Medical-Surgical Academy in Moscow and graduated in 1823. He then began his military medical service. In 1826, he was awarded the doctor of medicine degree by the Moscow Medical-Surgical Academy for his thesis on scurvy (De Scorbuto). He participated in the Russo-Turkish War (1828–1829).
In 1834, he began his duties as inspector at the Vilnius Medical-Surgical Academy. The rest of his life and work was associated with Vilnius and Lithuania. On 26 March 1835, he was elected member of the Imperial Vilnius Medical Society (from 1885 he was an honorary member of this society). The following year, he became a member of the Warsaw Medical Society. After the closure of the Academy in 1842, he retired and bought the estate of Svirany in the Sventyansky district of Vilnius province (at present Sventyany is Švenčionys, Lithuania). In 1842, Göhling’s book The experience of the medical civil police, with regard to the laws of the Russian Empire was published in Russian in Vilnius. This work drew the attention of Count Sergey S. Uvarov, the Deputy Minister of National Education. Uvarov offered Göhling a position in the Department of Public Medicine at the University of Dorpat (now Tartu, Estonia), but domestic circumstances forced Göhling to refuse the professorship. In addition to his work on medical police, Göhling published in Russian a medical textbook entitled Instructions for common people on how to prevent disease and how to cure with simple treatments in the absence of a physician (Vilnius, 1856). Göhling died in Vilnius on 20 November 1886.
