THE ADMINISTRATION OF WESTERN MEDICINE IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RUSSIA

In the seventeenth century, the Russian state endorsed Western medicine as the privileged therapeutic system. It imported Western medical personnel and Western medical equipment and pharmaceutical supplies in large quantities. It also created an administrative structure within the government, the Aptekarskii prikaz (Apothecary or Pharmacy Chancery), to oversee them. By combining Western medicine with Muscovite government, the Russians created the first state-administered centralized health care system in the Western world.