ABSTRACT
Medicine hardly figures among the activities ordinarily associated with the imperial Russian court in the reign of Catherine the Great (1762–96). Brilliance, splendour, luxury, opulence, refinement – or passion, pleasure, display, intrigue, favouritism, avarice, frivolity, depravity, hypocrisy, exploitation – these are the epithets commonly invoked to praise or to malign Catherine II and her court. Popular histories seldom mention such mundane matters as medical services or medical practitioners in the ‘barbaric splendour’ of the ‘gorgeous’ court centred on St Petersburg and its suburban palaces. 1 Perhaps as a function of these widespread, deeply rooted stereotypes, medicine in the context of the Russian court is fated to be trivialized, to be seen as insignificant or purely decorative. This chapter aims to question such superficial contentions.
