Lvivmedicaluniversity Is One of the Educational Institutions Known Far Beyond Ukraine

LvivNationalMedicalUniversity

LvivMedicalUniversity is one of the educational institutions known far beyond Ukraine. More than 220 years of its existence are characterized by the devoted work of many generations of scholars.

The first High School of Medicine in the territory of Ukrainian was ZamojskiAcademy, founded in 1593, not far from Lviv. A year later, the Academy received a university status and the right to confer the degrees of Doctor of Medicine. The first founders and teachers of the Medical Department in ZamojskiAcademy were the Lvivites, JanUrsyn and SzymonBurkowski.

The history of development of LvivMedicalUniversity goes as back as 1661, when for the first time the Medical Department was opened along with other departments at the University of Lviv. It was closed twice, and finally, its third arrangement started under the guidance of Professor H.Kadyi. In 1894, the Chair of General Anatomy, headed by Professor H.Kadyi, was opened. A year later, ProfessorA.Beck held the Chair of Normal Physiology and before 1908 specialized theoretical and clinical departments were created.

In the initial stages of the Medical Department renovation in Ukraine, the scientists from Krakow, Vienna, Heidelberg and other cities came here. During the Polish rule, Lviv became a source of the faculty for newly formed medical departments in Warsaw, Poznan and Vilnius. The faculty of the Medical Department made a valuable contribution by its academic works to the scientific treasury.

With the consolidation of the Polish authority in the Western regions of Ukraine and its extremely unfavourable attitude towards the study of the Ukrainians at the University of Lviv, it was necessary to create a separate UndergroundUkrainianUniversity. The Medical Department of the UkrainianUndergroundUniversity was created in 1921. Dr.VasylShchurat, Dr.MarkianPanchyshyn, Dr.YevgenDavydyak were the rectors of the UkrainianUndergroundUniversity during its existence. Medicine was taught only during the first two years of study, and due to the lack of appropriate laboratories and clinics, the following basic disciplines were taught: Anatomy, physiology, microanotomy, chemistry, etc. Students went abroad to continue their studies. In 1925, the most active Ukrainian students were arrested, and then the UkrainianUndergroundUniversity ceased to function. But 1,500 Ukrainian students had been educated in the LvivUndergroundUkrainianUniversity during the period of its existence, and it was recognized in Czechoslovakia, and in the University of Vienna and other foreign universities, thus becoming a unique phenomenon in the history of world culture.

In 1939, despite the long resistance of numerous professors, the Medical Department of Lviv University was transformed into the LvivStateMedicalUniversity with only two departments: Medical and Pharmaceutical. Professor, and later Academician A.Makarchenko headed the institute.

In 1941, the German occupation authorities launched vocational training courses in German at the Institute. These trainingcourses retained all the properties of a high medical school, first of all, due to the popular professor M.Panchyshyn.

Prof.M.Muzyka Prof. T.Hlukhenkyi, Prof.H.Skosohorenko, Prof.D.Panchenko, Prof.L.Kuzmenko, Acad.M.Danylenko, Acad.M.Pavlovskyi were appointed as rectors at Lviv State Medical Institute.

The Institute became one of the largest medical institutions in Ukraine. Now, more than a thousand professionals work at the chairs and in the laboratories of the Institute solving a variety of scientific issues. They include about 150doctors and 1,000candidates of sciences, in particular academicians, state prize winners, full members of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, honoured scientists, and laureates of State Prize of Ukraine.

Lviv medical schools continue their development, and their students, keeping the best traditions of the University, create new research programs for public health improvement, develop extensive contacts with the scientists of the Ukrainian Diaspora and leading foreign universities.

On November16,2004, LvivMedicalUniversity celebrated its 220th anniversary. Lviv became the centre of higher medical education and further asserts its authority in Ukraine and globally.

The conditions for renewing the sources of national culture and historical evaluation of our past are being created in the course of development of Ukrainian statehood at the University. The discovery of these achievements of our nation, formed on its historical path is an indispensable basis for spiritual renaissance of the best traditions of the Ukrainian society. Their augmentation and promulgation is our sacred duty.

HISTORICAL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHAIR OF NORMAL PHYSIOLOGY OF Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University

There was no separate Chair of Physiology at that time and physiology was taught together with anatomy from 1784 till 1805, when the Medical Department was closed. The first teacher of Physiology and Higher Anatomy was the Doctor of Medicine, JakubKostrzewski (Died in 1798), who held the title of ordinary public professor of physiology and MateriaMedica (Medical material). TomaszSedey (1757-1816) was another professor of Physiology, Higher Anatomy and Ophthalmology at the Medical Department. T.Sedey delivered lectures on Physiology and Higher Anatomy in Lviv from September 1786 till 1805.

In 1817, the work of LvivUniversity was restored, however, there was no Medical Department. It was substituted by the so-called Medical-Surgical Institute, which trained surgeons that had completed secondary education. This institution existed by academic year 1873-1874. Since then, the teaching Medicine at the University of Lviv ceased completely. Medical Department was restored only in 1894. On September 9, the opening ceremony of the Teaching Block of Anatomy was held. Since 1895, Physiology had been taught here.

On October15,1895 the Head of Chair, Prof.A.Beck, the student of N.Cybulski, delivered his first lecture on physiology. The newly-created Chair consisted of 17classrooms, a large lecture-room, where the conditions for lecture demonstrations and a range of scientific labs were created.

A.Beck was born in 1863 in a modest family of Krakow craftsman. He studied at the St.-Anna Gymnasium and at the Medical Department of Jagiellonian University, which he finished in 1890. In 1892, he defended his thesis on the topic On the Physiology of Movement. During his work at the Chair of Physiology in Krakow, Professor A.Beck together with ProfessorN.Cybulski and under his direct supervision wrote a number of works, and a scientific paper On Excitation of Different Parts of the Same Nerve (1893), caught a buzz among scientists of that time. Physiology and Electrophysiology of the nervous system were the in the focus of the scientific work of A.Beck. In 1894, A.Beck published a scientific work Determination of Functional Localization in Cerebrum and Spinal Cord with the Aid of Electrical Phenomena that resulted in further recognition by the physiologists of the world, and made him one of the founders of modern electroencephalography. In 1896, Professor A.Beck published his next scientific work dedicated to Further Research of Electrical Phenomena in the Cerebral Cortex co-authored by Professor No.Cybulski, where the methodology of electrophysiological research of localization of functions in the cerebral cortex of apes and dogs was developed and improved.

Also Professor A.Beck dealt with the issues of adjacent spheres of knowledge in his research work. His scientific achievements are characterized by more than 79scientific papers published in prestigious scientific publishings, as well as 100scientific reports delivered at the scientific forums. Prof.A.Beck actively participated in the preparation and the work of the International Congress of Physiologists that took place in Vienna, in 1910. Conversance with the printed scientific works by Professor A.Beck allows dividing them into three main groups. The first one is related to the issues of physiology of the nervous system, the second one — with researching the issues of sensory physiology, and the third on — to historical aspects of physiology and separate prominent physiologists.

In 1915, a two-volume textbook on human physiology (the second edition was published in 1924) that served a good source of knowledge for many generations of the students of medicine was issued, edited by Professor A.Beck and N.Cybulski.

Assoc.Prof.Tihovskyi, a versatile scholar, researcher with a broad worldview was formed under the influence of such renowned scientists as G.H.Dale (Nobel Prize in Physiology for establishing the chemical structure of neurotransmitters in the nervous system), Ch.S.Sherrington (Nobel Prize in Physiology for discoveries concerning the function of neurons), E.Starling (Priority research on the elucidation of cardiovascular system mechanisms) was working at the University of Lviv at the Chair of Physiology from 1918 till 1937.

VictorTyhovskyi was born on September1,1894 in Borshchiv, Galicia, in the family of a veterinarian, successfully finished the prestigious Gymnasium Franz-Josef, and later on — the University of Medicine. Since 1920, V.Tyhovskyi was working as a demonstrator at the Institute of Physiology, and since 1922 —as a senior lecturer of the Chair of Physiology. His research interests included the fundamental issues of neurophysiology, neuropsychology and biophysics.

In 1923, on receiving a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, VictorTyhovskyi went to the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, the USA) for study placement, where he cooperated with Prof.G.Pazetta. Since 1924 Tyhovskyi started working at the Woods Hole marine biological laboratory, Massachusetts, with Professor J.Jacobs. V.Tihovskyi’s research interests were extended by studying animal physiology. The scientist’s development continued in the following world's most prestigious universities: Oxford, Cambridge, and London, in collaboration with prominent physiologists G.H.Dale, and C.S.Sherrington.

In 1925, he returned to the University of Lviv and started working at the Chair of Physiology as a junior scientific assistant. Collaterally he was working at Veterinary Academy, at the Department of Agriculture and Forestry of Lviv Polytechnic. In 1930, VictorTyhovskyi became an associate professor, and since 1932, he headed the Institute of Physiology at the Medical Department of the University. A brilliant lecturer, a highly educated man, a scientist of sound reputation, a good teacher, VictorTyhovskyi was awarded the Diploma and a medal For Many Years of Service in 1938.

Since the academic year 1936-1937 and until the beginning of World War II, Prof.M.Wierzuchowski, who wrote more than 60scientific papers, headed the department. His experimental research in the sphere of physiology of glands of internal secretion, modelling of the diabetes, the conditions of hyperglycaemia, ketoacidosis with animals, and determination of the biochemical basis of gluconeogenesis and phosphorus exchange in the body were interesting and new.

The next stage of the development of the Chair is associated with the activity of the Associate Member of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Prof.A.M.Vorobiov, who was holding the Chair from 1944-45 till 1952. He was also the first dean of the re-opened Medical Department.

AnatoliiMarkovychVorobiov was born in Kharkiv, in 1900. In 1925, he graduated from Kharkiv Medical Institute. He started his scientific work, when he was a second-year student, under the supervision of VasylYakovychDanylevskyi, when he researched the effect of lecithin and certain hormones obtained by V.Danylevskyi and the effects of electric potentials on the body. After GeorgiyVolodymyrovychFolbort held the Chair of Physiology at Kharkiv Medical Institute, A.M.Vorobiov studied digestion processed. Since 1936 he has held the Chair of Physiology at the Kharkiv Institute of Dentistry. At the same time, he also managed the Department of Digestive Physiology at the Ukrainian Institute of Endocrinology. In 1940, AnatoliiMarkovych defended his doctoral thesis The Role of Sympathetic Innervation of the Nervous System and Pyloric Antrum in the Secretory Regulation of Gastric Glands (Kharkiv, 1940). During World War II, A.M.Vorobiov evacuated to the Caucasus and from 1941 till 1944 was working in Tbilisi at the Institute of Physiology of the Academy of Sciences in the Georgian SSR. There he studied electrical potentials of the cerebrum. On his return to Ukraine, he was directed to the Lviv Medical Institute. The main focus of research at his Chair was dedicated to studying the nervous regulation of the organs of the gastrointestinal tract. During that period, he trained a number of Candidates of Science, who later held the chairs at the Medical Institutes of Ivano-Frankivsk (V.S.Raytses), Luhansk (E.Ya.Dumin), Lviv (I.A.Medianyk, and I.V.Shostakivska).

In 1951, AnatoliiMarkovych was elected as an Associate Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and appointed as a director of the Institute of Physiology named after O.O.Bogomolets of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, which he headed until his death.

Educational facilities and scientific laboratories of the Chair were rebuilt during the period of work of Prof.A.M.Vorobiov. The scientific research on neurohumoral regulation of digestion was fruitfully and successfully conducted.

In 1952, Assoc.Prof.I.V.Skorohod, who studied reflexive correlations in the digestive organs, was holding the Chair for a short period of time.

In 1952, Prof.Ya.P.Sklyarov, who had held the Chair of Physiology previously and had been the dean of the Medical Department of Chernivtsi Medical Institute, was elected the Head of the Chair.

Ya.P.Sklyarov was born in 1901, in Poltava region. He graduated from the Poltava Institute of Popular Education, and in 1933, from the Medical Department of Kharkiv Medical Institute. While studying at the Institute, a talented student attracted the attention of I.P.Pavlov’s student Prof.G.V.Folbort, and was offered a post-graduate training programme at the Chair of Physiology. In this stage, his research was devoted to the study of conditioned reflexes and the secretory processes of main digestive glands. Apart from scientific work, YakivPavlovych did active educational work. Upon his graduation he worked as an assistant of the Chair of Physiology of Kharkiv Medical Institute, defended his Candidate’s dissertation and in 1938 was promoted to Associate Professor.

During World War II, he was the chief of the general clearing station of the 10th Army. He ensured the evacuation of the injured during the battles at Dvinsk, Rezekne, Koknese, Riga, and Litava. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star and the Order of the World War of the Fifth Degree, and many medals.

After demobilization, from 1946 till 1952, he was holding the Chair of General Physiology and was the Dean of the Medical Department at Chernivtsi Medical Institute. He defended his doctoral thesis in 1950, and he was awarded the degree of the Doctor of Medicine, and a year later – the title of Professor.

From 1952 till 1974, Ya.P.Sklyarov was holding the Chair of Physiology at Lviv Medical Institute. During this period, the main focus of research and the first school of physiologists-gastroenterologists in the Western regions of Ukraine were formed under his supervision. The main focus of research at the Chair became studying the physiology and digestion, the secretion of the digestive glands, absorption, mediator and enzyme changes in different functional states of the body and the effect of biologically active substances. As well higher nervous activity was researched. The summary of this work is reflected in the monograph Secretory Capacity of the Main Digestive Glands (1958) and collections of works Physiology and Pathology of Digestion (1956), Physiological Mechanisms of Compensatory Reaction and Recovery of the Processes (1958) and in the monograph Gastric Secretion (1954, 1961), Ultrastructural and Microchemical Processes in Gastric Glands (1979) co-authored with D.MKarpenko and Ye.M.Panasiuk. The issues of absorption in the small intestine (Ye.O.Semen, E.O.Yaremko, V.T.Bulatova, I.S.Bohdanovych, M.V.Anastasieva) and colon (B.V.Hataliak) were studied collaterally. These results were reflected in the monograph by Ya.P.Sklyarov, TheAbsorptiveCapacity of the Small Intestine (1966).

Studying of mediator- and enzyme-related processes and developing new experimental surgical techniques on the organs of the digestive system was one of the focuses of the scientific research of Professor Ya.P.Sklyarov. The regularities of unilateral conditioned reflexes and paired cortical activity (Ya.P.Sklyarov, M.P.Yarosh, V.S.Kononenko) were defined, the relationship between the processes of excitation and inhibition in the cerebral cortex, the processes of mediation and activity of mediator splitting enzymes (V.S.Kononenko, Ya.P.Sklyarov, L.M.Karpenko) were studied. The results were presented in the monograph Physiology of Higher Nervous Activity (1955), which was translated into Japanese and published at the University of Osaka.

Scientific research by the workers of the Chair were summarized in a collection of works New Method of Experimental Surgical Research (1963) and Practical Policies of Defining Certain Plasma Membrane-Bound Enzymes (1965).

Prof.Ya.P.Sklyarov was the author of 6monographs, over 140scientific papers, one of the editors of the chapter Digestion in the Comprehensive Medical Encyclopaedia, the honorary member of the All-Union Physiological Society.

While Ya.P.Sklyarov was holding the Chair, the 9th All-Union Conference on the Physiology and Pathology of Digestion (1956), the 8th Congress of the UPS (1968), Symposium Membrane Processes in the Organs of Digestive System (1968), All-Union Conference on Higher Nervous Activity (1970), the 12th All-Union Conference on the Physiology and Pathology of the Digestive System (1971) were organized and conducted at the Chair.

From 1953 till 1971, YakivPavlovych was supervising the research work at the Lviv Medical Institute. He initiated the research of the mineral waters of the Carpatian region (Skhidnytsia and Truskavets), controlling hypothyroidism in the Western and other regions of Ukraine.

12Doctoral and 32Candidate's theses were written under his supervision. Ya.P.Sklyarov’s students hold the Chairs of Physiology in different universities of Ukraine and CIS countries.

Prof.Ya.P.Sklyarov’s student, Academician, Honoured Scientist of Ukraine, YevhenMykolaiiovychPanasiuk has held the Chair since 1974. Continuing and developing the best scientific traditions of the Chair, he paid special attention to education, educational process, increase of the methodological level of scientific research conducted in the following main spheres: Regulatory mechanisms of neurotransmitter- and enzyme-related and electrolyte-related processes in gastroenterology, mechanisms of the influence of magnetic field, laser radiation, resort factors and biologically active substances on the body and recovery of the human health; the effects of specific and nonspecific factors on the central nervous system and increase of working capacity, endurance and recovery of the human body functioning. The monograph Ultrastructural and Microchemical Processes in Gastrointestinal Glands (Ye.M.Panasiuk, Ya.P.Sklyarov, L.M.Karpenko, 1979) was published, as a result of summarizing the research of enzyme- and mediator-related processes and electrolyte exchange in gastric mucosa. The results of longstanding research by Prof.Ye.M.Panasiuk, L.M.Karpenko, V.S.Kononenko, and Associate Prof.B.V.Hataliak, Ye.R.Kosyi, A.I.Zhukova, M.R..Hzhehotskyi, L.B.Kutsyk, O.Ya.Sklyarov, Candidates of Medicine, M.P.Yarosh, O.V.Onyshchenko, V.T.Slonska, O.M.Kopytko,.and N.P.Korpilova, provided for the basis for determining Prof.Ye.M.Panasiuk’s concept of autoregulation of mediator-, enzyme- and ion-related processes in the gastrointestinal tract, both in our country and abroad. The Faculty participated in the International Congresses of Physiologists and Gastroenterologists (1976, 1977, and 1981) (Czech Republic, Hungary, Belgium, and Bulgaria). Professor Ye.M.Panasiuk is the co-author of the monograph Lectins (1981), and Lectins in Histological Chemistry (1985), which systematized the knowledge about the obtained pure lectins, highlighted methodological aspects of research and purification of lectins, considered the practical aspects of this class of proteins in molecular biology and medicine for the first time in Soviet literature. The work on creating neural network models was conducted at the Chair (Prof.Ye.M.Panasiuk, Assoc.Prof.V.L.Kuzmenko).