Nikolai Sergeevich Korotkov (1874–1920)

      Forty years ago Canadian cardiologist Harold Nathan Segall visited Leningrad. The single aim of his visit was to learn everything about the life and work of a mysterious Russian doctor Nikolai Korotkov whose genius scientific discovery made in St. Petersburg in the early twentieth century became a world standard in measuring blood pressure. However, the Canadian cardiologist left Russia with a feeling of dissatisfaction. "I had many meetings in medical circles," wrote Segall later, "but not a single person knew anything about Korotkov". (Ann. Intern. Med. 1965. 65.1 pp. 147-149). English scientists M. Laner and E.O. Brien in the article entitled "In search of Korotkov" informed: "Who could have thought that Korotkov, whose name is constantly referred to in clinical medicine, and his method so widely used in medical practice, would be ignored by historians of medicine" (Brit. Med. J. 1982. 285. pp. 1796-1798).

      Russian doctors were of the similar opinion. As far back as in 1955 academician Nikolai Savitsky in his address to the Military Medical Academy declared that " even the medical staff of the clinic in St. Petersburg where Korotkov made his discovery know nothing about him." He expressed his hope that the Academy would correct the mistake. And the mistake was indeed corrected by one of the academician's pupils. At the All-Russia scientific conference on cardiology, which took place in St. Petersburg in 1995 and was devoted to the 90-th anniversary of Korotkov's method, Sergei Popov, Doctor of Medicine and Professor of the Military Medical Academy, made a report about the Russian surgeon, whose genius discovery is now used by all doctors of the world.

N.S.Korotkov's son Sergei Nikolaevich (on the right)is telling prof. S.E.Popov about his father. Photograph of 1970.

      Prof. Sergei Popov told us the following:
      "It took me thirty years to, grain by grain, reconstruct, with the help of archival documents, the image of Nikolai Sergeevich Korotkov as a person, a doctor and a scientist. Together with my student Walter Tchkhartashvili we were lucky to find the only photograph of Korotkov which survived. Please, reproduce it on your website. It was discovered in the archives of the Medical Faculty of the Moscow University where Nikolai Sergeevich studied.

      We also managed to find Korotkov's son — Sergei Nikolaevich, who followed in the footsteps of his father and became a doctor. But even he didn't know anything about his father's services to the medical science. However, his stories helped us resurrect for the descendants the chronicle of Nikolai Sergeevich's life and scientific activities.

Title-page of N.S.Korotkov's Doctor of Medical Sciences' dissertation.

      The history of his epoch-making scientific discovery is very educational.
      In 1904 Korotkov, a young surgeon of the Military Medical Academy, went to the front of the Russian - Japanese War as a volunteer. He worked in a hospital which treated many soldiers wounded in the major nutrient arteries of the extremities. As a rule, in order to save a man's life, the surgeon used to ligate the vessel and amputate the necrotic extremity. Korotkov set himself a task to save the wounded extremity after the ligation of the damaged artery. And his studies helped to solve the problem. Worrying about the wounded patients, he repeatedly auscultated their vessels with a phonendoscope and discovered some sounds which intermitted in a certain sequence. Those sounds were generally acknowledged as "Korotkov's sounds".
      When he returned to St. Petersburg from the front, he continued his studies on the dogs. Korotkov realized that, when the pressure in the cuff was lowered, there appeared the first sound, which corresponded to the systolic (maximum) pressure, while the moment when the sound disappeared corresponded to the diastolic (minimum) pressure, because the blood pressure in the arteries rhythmically pulsed in time with the heart".

    - - Why did the scientist's name, in essence, remain in oblivion? In your monograph you write that Korotkov's method was universally spread already during his lifetime..
    "Creative personalities are quite often drawn backstage. Why did this happen to Korotkov? So far, I can't tell you.

      Korotkov first reported about his sound method of measuring the blood pressure on 8 November 1905 at the scientific conference of the doctors of the Academy's military hospital. At that time a number of physicians who were well known in the scientific circles received the discovery with a certain scepticism and distrust. Some of them were rather critical about it. The subject of the debates was the understanding of the nature of the origin of sounds.

The academic town on the Vyborg Side of St.Petersburg. N.S.Korotkov worked here, at the surgical clinic.

      Korotkov was able to defend his thesis for the degree of the Doctor of Medicine at the Military Medical Academy only in 1910, five years after he had discovered his sound method of measuring the blood pressure. As he admitted in the introduction to his dissertation, "it happened owing to some sad circumstances": Korotkov fell ill with consumption. I think that his health was undermined by his studies at the Kharkov and Moscow Universities combined with voluntary work as an intern surgeon in a number of St. Petersburg clinics, two long expeditions to the Army in the Field in the Far East and, finally, with many years of exhausting creative and experimental work over his Doctor of Medicine thesis. At the end of 1905 Nikolai Sergeevich was placed for medical treatment in one of the clinics of the Military Medical Academy. When he recovered, he learned that there was no work for him in St. Petersburg. In December 1910 he went to the gold fields of the Lena River gold-mining company to work as a doctor for two years.

      Korotkov's discovery had a great significance for the development of the world medicine. It matched the era of antibiotics opened by the Scottish scientist Fleming and the discovery of the X-rays by Roentgen. There is hardly another scientific discovery which is as universally and as commonly used today in medical practice as the sound method of measuring blood pressure.

      Unfortunately, Korotkov was fated to live for 46 years only. He died in 1920 leaving us not only a new method for the diagnosis of the functioning of the cardiovascular system, but also the model of a person who was so whole-heartily devoted to the doctor's duty. Nikolai Sergeevich was buried in the Bogoslovsky Cemetery in St. Petersburg, but we haven't been able to find his grave so far".

      "To commemorate the memory of the great Russian scientist," said Prof. Sergei Yegorovich Popov in conclusion, "in 1998 we set up the N.S. Korotkov Memorial Society. The academic council of the Military Medical Academy instituted the international prize and the gold medal in the name of N.S. Korotkov. We are planning to present the awards once in two years. We intend to do it for the first time during the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. The second presentation of the awards will also take place in St. Petersburg in November 2005 at the World Congress of Cardiologists devoted to the centenary of Korotkov's method.