In 1917, the residents of Tobolsk were extremely lucky. They now have their own doctor: not only from the capital’s education and upbringing, but also always, at any moment, ready to come to the aid of the sick, and free of charge. The Siberians sent sleighs, horse teams, and even a full ride for the doctor: no joke, the personal doctor of the emperor himself and his family! It happened, however, that the patients did not have transport: then the doctor in a general’s overcoat with tattered insignia would move across the street, getting stuck waist-deep in the snow, and still end up at the bedside of the sufferer.
He treated better than local doctors, and did not charge for treatment. But compassionate peasant women thrust him either a bag of eggs, a layer of lard, a bag of pine nuts or a jar of honey. The doctor returned to the governor's house with gifts. There new government kept in custody the abdicated sovereign and his family. The doctor's two children also languished in prison and were as pale and transparent as the four Grand Duchesses and the little one. Tsarevich Alexey. Passing by the house where the royal family was kept, many peasants knelt down, bowed to the ground, and mournfully crossed themselves, as if on an icon.
Empress's Choice
Among the children of the famous Sergei Petrovich Botkin, the founder of several major trends in medicine, the life physician of two Russian autocrats, the youngest son Evgeniy did not seem to shine with anything special. He had little contact with his illustrious father, but followed in his footsteps, like his older brother, who became a professor at the Medical-Surgical Academy. Evgeniy graduated from the Faculty of Medicine with dignity, defended his doctoral dissertation on the properties of blood, got married and volunteered for the Russo-Japanese War. This was his first experience of military field therapy, his first encounter with cruel reality. Shocked by what he saw, he wrote detailed letters to his wife, which were later published as “Notes on the Russo-Japanese War.”
I noticed this work Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Botkin was granted an audience. No one knows what the august lady said in private, suffering not only from the fragility of her health, but most of all from the carefully hidden incurable illness of her son, the heir to the Russian throne.
After the meeting, Evgeniy Sergeevich was offered to take the position of the royal physician. Perhaps his work on studying blood played a role, but, most likely, the empress recognized him as a knowledgeable, responsible and selfless person.
In the center, from right to left, E. S. Botkin, V. I. Gedroits, S. N. Vilchikovsky. In the foreground is Empress Alexandra Feodorovna with the Grand Duchesses Tatiana and Olga. Photo: Public Domain
For myself - nothing
This is exactly how Evgeny Botkin explained to his children the changes in their lives: despite the fact that the doctor’s family moved to a beautiful cottage, entered government support, and could participate in palace events, he no longer belonged to himself. Despite the fact that his wife soon left the family, all the children expressed a desire to stay with their father. But he rarely saw them, accompanying the royal family for treatment, rest, and on diplomatic trips. Evgeny Botkin's daughter Tatyana at the age of 14 she became the mistress of the house and managed expenses, giving funds for the purchase of uniforms and shoes to her older brothers. But no absences, no hardships of the new way of life could destroy the warm and trusting relationship that bound the children and father. Tatyana called him “unvalued daddy” and subsequently voluntarily followed him into exile, believing that she had only one duty - to be close to her father and do what he needed. The royal children treated Evgeniy Sergeevich just as tenderly, almost like a family. Tatyana Botkina's memoirs contain a story about how the Grand Duchesses poured water from a jug for him when he was lying with a sore leg and could not get up to wash his hands before examining the patient.
Many classmates and relatives envied Botkin, not understanding how difficult his life was in this high position. It is known that Botkin had a sharply negative attitude towards Rasputin’s personality and even refused to accept his sick man at his home (but he himself went to him to help). Tatyana Botkina believed that the improvement in the heir’s health when visiting the “elder” occurred just when Evgeniy Sergeevich had already carried out medical measures that strengthened the boy’s health, and Rasputin attributed this result to himself.
Last words
When the sovereign was asked to choose a small retinue to accompany him into exile, only one of the generals he indicated agreed. Fortunately, there were faithful servants among others, and they followed the royal family to Siberia, and some suffered martyrdom along with the last Romanovs. Among them was Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin. For this life physician there was no question of choosing his fate - he made it a long time ago. In the dark months under arrest, Botkin not only treated, strengthened, and spiritually supported his patients, but also served as a home teacher - the royal couple decided that the education of their children should not be interrupted, and all prisoners taught them in some subject.
His own youngest children, Tatyana and Gleb, lived nearby in a rented house. The Grand Duchesses and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna sent cards, notes, and small gifts made with their own hands to brighten up the difficult life of these children, who of their own free will followed their father into exile. Children could only see “daddy” for a few hours a day. But even from the time when he was released from arrest, Botkin carved out the opportunity to visit sick Siberians and rejoiced at the suddenly opened opportunity for wide practice.
Tatyana and Gleb were not allowed into Yekaterinburg, where the execution took place; they remained in Tobolsk. For a long time we didn’t hear anything about my father, but when we found out, we couldn’t believe it.
May 27, 1865 – July 17, 1918
Russian doctor, life physician of the family of Nicholas II, nobleman
Biography
Childhood and studies
He was the fourth child in the family of the famous Russian doctor Sergei Botkin (physician to Alexander II and Alexander III) and Anastasia Alexandrovna Krylova.
In 1878, based on the education he received at home, he was immediately admitted to the 5th grade of the 2nd St. Petersburg Classical Gymnasium. After graduating from high school in 1882, he entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of St. Petersburg University, however, having passed the exams for the first year of the university, he went to the junior department of the newly opened preparatory course at the Military Medical Academy.
In 1889 he graduated from the academy third in the class, receiving the title of doctor with honors.
Work and career
From January 1890 he worked as a medical assistant at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. In December 1890, he was sent abroad at his own expense for scientific purposes. He studied with leading European scientists and became familiar with the structure of Berlin hospitals.
At the end of his business trip in May 1892, Evgeniy Sergeevich became a doctor at the court chapel, and in January 1894 he returned to the Mariinsky Hospital as a supernumerary resident.
On May 8, 1893, he defended his dissertation at the Academy for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, “On the question of the influence of albumin and peptones on some functions of the animal body,” dedicated to his father. The official opponent for the defense was I.P. Pavlov.
In the spring of 1895, he was sent abroad and spent two years in medical institutions in Heidelberg and Berlin, where he listened to lectures and practiced with leading German doctors - professors G. Munch, B. Frenkel, P. Ernst and others. In May 1897 he was elected privat-docent of the Military Medical Academy.
In 1904, with the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, he volunteered for the active army and was appointed head of the medical unit. Russian society Red Cross (ROKK) in the Manchurian Army. “For distinction rendered in cases against the Japanese” he was awarded officer military orders - the Order of St. Vladimir III and II degrees with swords, St. Anna II degree, St. Stanislav III degree, the Serbian Order of St. Sava II degree and the Bulgarian - “For civic merit."
In the fall of 1905, Evgeny Botkin returned to St. Petersburg and began teaching at the academy. In 1907 he was appointed chief physician of the community of St. George.
At the request of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, he was invited as a doctor to the royal family and in April 1908 was appointed personal physician to Nicholas II. He remained in this position until his death.
He was also an advisory member of the Military Sanitary Scientific Committee at the Imperial Headquarters, and a member of the Main Directorate of the Russian Red Cross Society. He had the rank of actual state councilor.
Exile and death
In 1917, after the fall of the monarchy on March 2 (15), he remained with the royal family in Tsarskoye Selo, and then followed her into exile. In Tobolsk he opened a free medical practice for local residents. In April 1918, together with the royal couple and their daughter Maria, he was transported from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg.
He was shot along with everyone imperial family in Yekaterinburg in the Ipatiev House on the night of July 16-17, 1918.
According to the memoirs of a former Austrian prisoner of war who went over to the side of the Bolsheviks, I. L. Meyer, published in the magazine “7 TAGE” on July 14-25, 1956, the revolutionary headquarters offered Botkin freedom and work in Moscow, he, realizing that he would die along with the tsarist family, nevertheless refused. However, Meyer's Memoirs themselves are most likely a falsification.
Canonization and rehabilitation
Canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1981, along with others executed in Ipatiev’s house - both the Romanovs and their servants. The ROC's decision was different. The Canonization Commission, headed by Metropolitan Juvenal, considering the issue of canonization of the royal family, noted that:
October 30, 2009 General Prosecutor's Office Russian Federation decided to rehabilitate 52 people from the circle of Emperor Nicholas II and his family who were subjected to repression after the revolution. Among those rehabilitated was Evgeny Botkin.
Family
Evgeny Botkin had four children: Yuri, Dmitry, Gleb and Tatyana. In 1910, Botkin divorced his wife (Olga Vladimirovna).
Son Dmitry - cornet of the Life Guards Cossack regiment - died in the First world war(December 3, 1914, he covered the retreat of the Cossack reconnaissance patrol). Posthumously awarded the St. George Cross, IV degree.
After the revolution, Tatyana and Gleb Botkin followed their father into exile in Tobolsk, but the authorities did not let them into Yekaterinburg. After the defeat of the Whites, Tatyana and Gleb went into exile. Abroad, Tatyana Botkina (married Melnik) wrote “Memories of the Royal Family,” where she also mentioned her father. Gleb Botkin also left memoirs.
Currently, Botkin’s grandson, Konstantin Konstantinovich Melnik-Botkin (son of Tatyana Botkina and Konstantin Melnik - they had three children in total), lives in France, who coordinated the activities of the French intelligence services in the 1960s.
Proceedings
- “On the question of the influence of albumin and peptones on some functions of the animal body”
- “Light and shadows of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905: From letters to his wife” 1908.
This fool is a soldier!
Sergei Petrovich was born in 1832 into a family of wealthy Moscow tea traders, the Botkins. There was no doubt that he would follow the path of his older relatives and begin trading Chinese tea in the same way. But providence decreed otherwise. The boy grew up dull. By the age of nine, he had barely learned to form words from letters. There was no talk of full reading.
Doctors, however, did not see any serious pathologies. And the father said sadly: “What should we do with this fool? There is only one thing left - to give him up as a soldier."
But quite unexpectedly, Botkin discovered amazing counting abilities. A mathematics teacher was hastily invited to see the boy, and he confirmed that he was a mathematical genius. Plans for military service were naturally rejected. Young Botkin was sent to a private boarding school, from where he had a direct path to Moscow University.
But literally before admission, a royal decree is issued limiting the enrollment of students. Only the nobility provided a path to knowledge. An exception was made for the only, most unpopular faculty - medicine. This is where the young man goes.
So Sergei Petrovich became a doctor completely by accident - due to the lack of other tempting prospects.
The house where S.P. was born. Botkin. Moscow, Zemlyanoy Val, 35. Photo from wikipedia.org
No harmonious scientific theories!
Botkin unexpectedly fell in love with medicine. Although I was dissatisfied with the training itself. He wrote: “Most of our professors studied in Germany and more or less talentedly taught us the knowledge they acquired; we listened to them diligently and at the end of the course considered ourselves ready-made doctors with ready answers to every question that arises in practical life...
Our future was destroyed by our school, which, teaching us knowledge in the form of catechismal truths, did not arouse in us that inquisitiveness that determines further development.”
This understanding came to Sergei Petrovich after graduating from university, in extremely extreme situations - in war. There he made his choice - surgery and nothing more. But Botkin’s plans collapse again - the path to major surgery turns out to be closed due to significant myopia.
And again the forced choice is therapy. Studying in Germany, England, France, Austria. Getting to know local luminaries, finding like-minded people. In particular, the Parisian professor Tussaud said at the very beginning of his first lecture: “Do you want me to present medicine to you in the form of a coherent scientific theory? So, you won’t hear anything like that here!”
S.P. Botkin with a consultation at the patient’s bedside. Photo from the site mednecropol.ru
Botkin’s medical method gradually took shape. No canons. There are no universal laws. Each organism is unique. It is important to find an approach to it - and everything will work out, the disease will recede.
In 1859, Botkin married. His chosen one is Nastya Krylova, the daughter of a simple, poor official. As a honeymoon, the young husband suggested a tour of European resorts. The wife agreed - and immediately regretted it. She complained in one of her letters: “He’s really crazy. And in his sleep he constantly raves about medicine. The other day I woke him up and said that it was time to get up, and he answered: “Ah, it’s time, but I thought that, like now in wartime, I would take one French leg, the other Russian and try my electrical apparatus on them? ..""
He devoted most of his time not to his young wife, but to professional conversations with local doctors.
And then - St. Petersburg, a rapid medical career. Sergei Petrovich – professor of medicine, privy councilor, head of the academic therapeutic clinic of the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy. Creation of your own clinical laboratory from scratch. There was no time left for anything.
Sergei Petrovich wrote to his brother Mikhail: “Here is my everyday day: in the morning, as soon as you get up, you go to the clinic, give a lecture for about two hours, then finish your visit; outpatients come in and won’t even let you smoke a cigar in peace after the lecture. You’ve just relieved the sick, sat down to work in the laboratory, and now it’s already the third hour, there’s a little over an hour left until lunch, and this hour is usually given to city practice, if it turns out to be one, which is very rare, especially now that my fame thunders through the city. At five o'clock you return home, pretty tired, and sit down for dinner with your family. I’m usually so tired that I can barely eat and have been thinking since the very soup about how to go to bed; after a whole hour of rest you begin to feel like a human being; in the evenings now I don’t go to the hospital, but, getting up from the sofa, sit down for half an hour at the cello and then sit down to prepare for the next day’s lecture; the work is interrupted by a short intermission for tea. You usually work until one o’clock and, having had dinner, happily fall asleep.”
Let's read "Rockambole"
S.P. Botkin, portrait by I.N. Kramskoy (1880). Image from wikipedia.org
Botkin's methods discouraged his contemporaries. Here, for example, are the memories of one of the patients, the seriously ill wife of physiologist Ivan Pavlov:
- Tell me, do you like milk?
– I don’t like it at all and I don’t drink.
- But we will still drink milk. You're a Southerner, and you're probably used to drinking at dinner.
- Never. Not a bit.
- However, we will drink. Do you play cards?
- What do you mean, Sergei Petrovich, never in your life.
- Well, let's play. Have you read Dumas or such a wonderful thing as Rocambole?
- What do you think about me, Sergei Petrovich? After all, I recently finished my courses, and we are not used to being interested in such trifles.
Three months later, Serafima Alexandrovna recovered.
Another time, a student who was suffering from abdominal pain came to Sergei Petrovich. The ice pack prescribed by other doctors did not help, it only made things worse. The examination took place at his home; daguerreotypes depicting the patient on a winter hunt hung on the walls.
– Do you always wear an unbuttoned overcoat? – asked Botkin.
“Yes,” he answered. - In any frost.
“I still advise you to button up,” said Botkin. - Continue with quinine. The bubble is out. Most likely your illness is a cold.
Back then, no one knew about the stomach flu. Botkin intuitively felt that the cold, which should help, in this particular case harms. The advice took action.
Telegraph operator Ivan Gorlov. Umbilical hernia. The skin under the bandage is not pressed, which means it is not worn. Why doesn't he wear it? Shy. Prescribe him bromine so he doesn't get nervous.
Housewife Natalya Sukhova. Suffering from acne. The liver should be cleansed.
Barber Konstantin Vasiliev. Weakness, drowsiness, decreased interest in life. I recently moved into a house opposite a 24-hour printing shop. Recipe: earplugs at night.
Botkin ordered another patient to change route. He went to the Kremlin every day through the Spasskaya Tower, and Sergei Petrovich ordered through the Trinity Tower. And the disease subsided.
Fiction? No. The fact is that the icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands, hanging over the Spassky Gate, had to take off the hat in any frost, which was the cause of the illness.
How did Sergei Petrovich come up with this? The answer is simple - he was just a genius and loved people very much.
Ivan Pavlov wrote: “His deep mind, not deluded by immediate success, was looking for the keys to the great riddle: what is a sick person and how to help him... Sergei Petrovich was the best personification of the fruitful union of medicine and physiology, those two types of human activity that are before our eyes they are erecting a building of science about the human body and promising in the future to provide man with his best happiness – health and life.”
Deadly Cunning
The grave of S.P. Botkin at the Novodevichy cemetery in St. Petersburg. Photo from the site mednecropol.ru
Botkin was torn between medical science and helping patients. I didn’t rest, I slept only for a few hours. He supported himself with liters of coffee and the strongest cigars. It is not surprising that over the years he began to have heart problems. Attacks of suffocation became more and more frequent. They happened right at the academy, behind the teaching chair, while receiving patients.
He, of course, suspected that it was a matter of the heart, but he pushed that thought away. If you recognize the presence of angina, you will have to radically change your lifestyle. But this was unacceptable for Botkin. After all, then research will be suspended, hundreds of people will be left without help. No, this is absolutely impossible.
And Sergei Petrovich came up with such a trick. He consoled himself with the fact that weakness, faintness, shortness of breath and suffocation also occur with cholelithiasis. For which he treated himself. Of course, without success.
In 1889, the disease became completely unbearable. Sergei Petrovich finally decided to go to a resort in France. There he died - from an attack of coronary artery disease, having lived only 57 years.
This was the only incorrect diagnosis made by Dr. Botkin.
“I finished him off with a shot to the head,” Yurovsky later wrote. He posed openly and bragged about the murder. When they tried to find the remains of Dr. Botkin in August 1918, they found only pince-nez with broken glass. Their fragments mixed with others - from medallions and icons, vials and bottles that belonged to the family of the last Russian Tsar.
On February 3, 2016, Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin was canonized by the Russian Church. Orthodox doctors, of course, advocated for his glorification. Many appreciated the feat of the doctor who remained faithful to his patients. But not only that. His faith was conscious, hard-won, despite the temptations of time. Evgeniy Sergeevich went from unbelief to holiness, like a good doctor goes to a patient, depriving himself of the right to choose whether to go or not. It was forbidden to talk about him for many decades. At that time he was lying in an unmarked grave - as an enemy of the people, executed without trial. At the same time, one of the most famous clinics in the country was named after his father, Sergei Petrovich Botkin - he was glorified as a great doctor.
The first doctor of the empire
And this glory was completely deserved. After the death of Dr. Pirogov, Sergei Botkin became the most respected doctor in the Russian Empire.
But until the age of nine he was considered mentally retarded. His father, a wealthy St. Petersburg tea merchant Pyotr Botkin, even promised to give Seryozha a soldier, when it suddenly turned out that the boy could not distinguish letters due to severe astigmatism. Having corrected Sergei’s vision, we discovered that he had a great interest in mathematics. He was going to follow this path, but suddenly Emperor Nicholas I forbade the admission of persons of non-noble origin to any faculties except medicine. The sovereign’s idea was far from reality and did not last long, but it had the happiest impact on the fate of Sergei Botkin.
The beginning of his fame was laid in the Crimean War, which Sergei Petrovich spent in Sevastopol in the medical detachment of Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov. At the age of 29 he became a professor. Before reaching forty, he founded the Epidemiological Society. He was the personal physician of Emperor Alexander the Liberator, and then treated his son, Alexander the Peacemaker, combining this with work in free outpatient clinics and “infectious barracks.” His living room was sometimes filled with up to fifty patients, from whom the doctor did not charge a penny for their appointment.
Sergei Petrovich Botkin
In 1878, Sergei Petrovich was elected chairman of the Society of Russian Doctors, which he led until his death. He died in 1889. They say that in his entire life, Sergei Petrovich made only one incorrect diagnosis - to himself. He was sure that he suffered from liver colic, but died from heart disease. “Death took away its most implacable enemy from this world,” the newspapers wrote.
“If faith is added to the doctor’s deeds...”
Evgeniy was the fourth child in the family. Survived the death of his mother when he was ten years old. She was a rare woman worthy of a husband: she played many instruments and had a keen understanding of music and literature, and was fluent in several languages. The couple organized the famous Botkin Saturdays together. Relatives gathered, including the poet Afanasy Fet, philanthropist Pavel Tretyakov, and friends, including the founder of Russian physiology Ivan Sechenov, writer Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, composers Alexander Borodin and Mily Balakirev. All together at the large oval table they formed a highly peculiar gathering.
Evgeniy spent his early childhood in this wonderful atmosphere. Brother Peter said: “Inwardly kind, with an extraordinary soul, he was terrified of any fight or fight. We other boys used to fight furiously. He, as usual, did not participate in our fights, but when a fist fight became dangerous, he, at the risk of injury, stopped the fighters...”
Here one can see the image of a future military doctor. Evgeniy Sergeevich had the opportunity to bandage the wounded on the front line, when shells exploded so close that he was covered with earth. At his mother’s request, Evgeniy was educated at home, and after her death he immediately entered the fifth grade of the gymnasium. Like his father, he initially chose mathematics and even studied for a year at the university, but then he still preferred medicine. He graduated from the Military Medical Academy with honors. His father managed to be happy for him, but that same year Sergei Petrovich passed away. Pyotr Botkin recalled how hard Evgeny experienced this loss: “I came to my father’s grave and suddenly heard sobs in a deserted cemetery. Coming closer, I saw my brother lying in the snow. “Oh, it’s you, Petya, you came to talk to dad,” and again the sobs. And an hour later, during the reception of patients, it could not have occurred to anyone that this calm, self-confident and powerful man could cry like a child.”
Having lost the support of his parent, Evgeniy achieved everything on his own. Became a doctor at the Court Chapel. Trained in the best German clinics, studying childhood diseases, epidemiology, practical obstetrics, surgery, nervous diseases and blood diseases, on which he defended his dissertation. At that time, there were still too few doctors to afford a narrow specialization.
Evgeniy Petrovich married 18-year-old noblewoman Olga Vladimirovna Manuilova at the age of twenty-five. The marriage was amazing at first. Olga was orphaned early, and her husband became everything to her. Only her husband’s extreme busyness upset Olga Vladimirovna - he worked in three or more places, following the example of his father and many other doctors of that era. From the Court Chapel he hurried to the Mariinsky Hospital, from there to the Military Medical Academy, where he taught. And this doesn't include business trips.
Olga was religious, and Evgeny Sergeevich was skeptical about faith at first, but later completely changed. “There were few believers among us,” he wrote about the academy graduates shortly before his execution, in the summer of 1918, “but the principles professed by everyone were close to Christian. If faith is added to the actions of a doctor, then this is due to the special mercy of God towards him. I turned out to be one of these lucky ones - through a difficult ordeal, the loss of my first-born, six-month-old son Seryozha.
"Light and Shadows of the Russo-Japanese War"
This is what he called his memories of the front, where he headed the St. George Hospital of the Red Cross. The Russo-Japanese War was the first in Botkin's life. The result of this protracted business trip was two military orders, experience in helping the wounded and enormous fatigue. However, his book “Light and Shadows of the Russo-Japanese War” began with the words: “We are traveling cheerfully and comfortably.” But that was on the road. The following entries are completely different: “They came, these unfortunate ones, but they did not bring any groans, no complaints, or horrors with them. They came, largely on foot, even wounded in the legs (so as not to have to travel in a gig along these terrible roads), patient Russian people, now ready to go into battle again.”
Once, during a night round of the Georgievsky hospital, Evgeniy Sergeevich saw a soldier wounded in the chest named Sampson hugging a delirious orderly. When Botkin felt his pulse and stroked it, the wounded man pulled both his hands to his lips and began to kiss them, imagining that it was his mother who had come. Then he began to call his aunts and kissed his hand again. It was amazing that none of the sufferers “complained, no one asked: “Why, why am I suffering?” - how people in our circle grumble when God sends them trials,” wrote Botkin.
He himself did not complain about the difficulties. On the contrary, he said that before it was much more difficult for doctors. I remembered one hero-doctor from the time of the Russian-Turkish war. He once came to the hospital in an overcoat on his naked body and in torn soldier's footwear, despite the severe frost. It turned out that he met a wounded man, but there was nothing to bandage him with, and the doctor tore his linen into bandages and a bandage, and dressed the soldier in the rest.
Most likely, Botkin would have done the same. His first feat, described rather sparingly, dates back to mid-June. While traveling to the front line, Evgeniy Sergeevich came under artillery fire. The first shrapnel exploded in the distance, but then the shells began to land closer and closer, so that the stones they knocked out flew into people and horses. Botkin was about to leave the dangerous place when a soldier wounded in the leg approached. “It was the finger of God that decided my day,” Botkin recalled. “Go calmly,” he said to the wounded man, “I will stay for you.” I took a medical bag and went to the artillerymen. The guns fired continuously, and the ground, covered with flowers, shook underfoot, and where Japanese shells fell, it literally groaned. At first it seemed to Evgeniy Sergeevich that a wounded man was groaning, but then he became convinced that it was the ground. It was scary. However, Botkin was not afraid for himself: “Never before have I felt the strength of my faith to such an extent. I was completely convinced that, no matter how great the risk to which I was exposed, I would not be killed if God did not wish it; and if He wishes, that is His holy will.”
When the call came from above: “Stretcher!” - He ran there with the orderlies to see if there were anyone bleeding. Having provided assistance, he sat down to rest for a while.
“One of the battery orderlies, handsome guy Kimerov looked at me, looked, and finally crawled out and sat down next to me. Whether he felt sorry to see me alone, whether he was ashamed that they left me, or whether my place seemed enchanted to him - I don’t know. He, like the rest of the battery, however, was in battle for the first time, and we started talking about the will of God... Above us and around us it was vomiting - it seemed that the Japanese had chosen your slope as their target, but while working you don’t notice the fire .
- Forgive me! – Kimerov suddenly screamed and fell backwards. I unbuttoned it and saw that his lower abdomen was pierced, the front bone was broken off and all the intestines came out. He quickly began to die. I sat over him, helplessly holding his intestines with gauze, and when he died, I closed his head, folded his hands and laid him more comfortably ... "
What captivates us in Evgeniy Sergeevich’s notes is the absence of cynicism, on the one hand, and pathos, on the other. He walked surprisingly smoothly all his life between extremes: lively, joyful and at the same time deeply worried about people. Greedy for everything new and alien to revolution. Not only his book, his life is the story, first of all, of a Russian Christian, creating, suffering, open to God and all the best that is in the world.
“There is still no fight, and I continue to write. We should follow the example of the soldiers. I ask one wounded man whom I found writing a letter:
- What, friend, are you writing home?
“Home,” he says.
- Well, are you describing how you were wounded and how well you fought?
- No, I’m writing that I’m alive and well, otherwise the old people would start taking out insurance.
This is the greatness and delicacy of the simple Russian soul!”
August 1, 1904. Retreat. Everything that could be dispensed with was sent to Liaoyang, including the iconostasis and the tent in which the church was built. But the service continued anyway. Along the ditch that surrounded the field church, they stuck pine trees, made the Royal Doors out of them, placed one pine tree behind the altar, the other in front of the lectern prepared for the prayer service. They hung the image on the last two pine trees. And the result was a church that seemed even closer than all others to God because it stood directly under His heavenly cover. Before the prayer service, the priest, who in battle under heavy fire gave communion to the dying, said a few simple and heartfelt words on the topic that prayer is for God, and the service is not lost for the Tsar. His loud voice echoed clearly over the nearby mountain in the direction of Liaoyang. And it seemed that these sounds from our eerie distance would continue to jump from mountain to mountain to relatives and friends standing in prayer, to their poor, dear homeland.
“- Stop, people! - God's anger seemed to say: - Wake up! Is this what I teach you, unfortunate ones! How dare you, unworthy ones, destroy what you cannot create?! Stop, you crazy people!
Botkin recalled how he met an officer who, as the father of a young boy, was trying to be placed away from the front line. But he was eager to join the regiment and finally achieved his goal. What happened next? After the first battle, this unfortunate man, who until recently longed for war and glory, presented to the regiment commander the rest of his company, about twenty-five people. “Where is the company?” - they asked him. The young officer’s throat was constricted, and he could barely say that she was all there!
“Yes, I’m tired,” Botkin admitted, “I’m inexpressibly tired, but I’m tired only in my soul. She seems to have gotten all sick with me. Drop by drop my heart was bleeding, and soon I will not have it: I will indifferently pass by my crippled, wounded, hungry, frozen brothers, as if I were passing by an eyesore on a kaoliang; I will consider as habitual and correct what just yesterday turned my whole soul upside down. I feel how she is gradually dying inside me..."
“We were drinking afternoon tea in a large dining tent, in the pleasant silence of a happy home environment, when K. rode up to our tent on horseback and, without dismounting from his horse, shouted to us in a voice in which we could hear that everything was lost and there was no salvation:
- Peace, peace!
Completely killed, entering the tent, he threw his cap on the ground.
- World! - he repeated, sitting down on the bench..."
The wife and children have been waiting for Evgeniy Sergeevich for a long time. And there was also someone waiting for him, about whom he had not thought during the war, who was still lying in the cradle. Tsarevich Alexei, an unfortunate child born with a severe hereditary disease - hemophilia. Blood diseases were the subject of Evgeniy Sergeevich’s doctoral dissertation. This predetermined the choice of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna who would become the new physician of the Royal Family.
Life physician of the emperor
After the death of the Royal Family's personal physician, Dr. Hirsch, the Empress was asked who should take his place. She replied:
- Botkin.
– Which one? - they asked her.
The fact is that Evgeniy Sergeevich’s brother, Sergei, was also well known as a doctor.
“The one who was in the war,” explained the Queen.
They did not tell her that both Botkins took part in the hostilities. Evgeniy Sergeevich was known throughout Russia as a military doctor.
Alas, Tsarevich Alexei was seriously ill, and the Empress’s health left much to be desired. Due to swelling, the Empress wore special shoes and could not walk for a long time. Attacks of palpitations and headaches confined her to bed for a long time. A lot of other responsibilities also piled up, which Botkin attracted like a magnet. For example, he continued to be involved in the affairs of the Red Cross.
Tatyana Botkina with her brother Yuri
The relationship with his wife, although they had previously loved each other, began to rapidly deteriorate. “Life at court was not very fun, and nothing brought variety to its monotony,” recalled daughter Tatyana. “Mom missed me terribly.” She felt abandoned, almost betrayed. For Christmas 1909, the doctor gave his wife an amazing pendant ordered from Faberge. When Olga Vladimirovna opened the box, the children gasped: the opal, trimmed with diamonds, was so beautiful. But their mother only said displeasedly: “You know that I can’t stand disgrace! They bring misfortune! I was about to return the gift back, but Evgeniy Sergeevich patiently said: “If you don’t like it, you can always exchange it.” She exchanged the pendant for another one, with an aquamarine, but there was no increase in happiness.
No longer young, but still beautiful woman, Olga Vladimirovna was languishing, it began to seem to her that life was passing by. She fell in love with her sons' teacher, the Baltic German Friedrich Lichinger, who was almost half her age, and soon began to live openly with him, demanding a divorce from her husband. Not only the sons, but also the younger children - Tatyana and mother's favorite Gleb - decided to stay with their father. “If you had left her,” Gleb told his father, “I would have stayed with her. But when she leaves you, I stay with you! During Lent, Olga Vladimirovna decided to take communion, but on the way to church she injured her leg and decided that even God had turned away from her. But my husband doesn’t. The spouses were one step away from reconciliation, but... all the courtiers in Tsarskoe Selo, all former acquaintances looked through her, as if she were an empty place. This hurt Evgeny Sergeevich no less than his wife. He was angry, but even the children saw her as a stranger. And Olga Vladimirovna suddenly realized that it wouldn’t be the same as before. Then there was Easter, the most joyless of their lives.
“A few days later we were relieved to learn,” Tatyana wrote, “that she was leaving again “for treatment.” The farewell was difficult, but short. The reconciliation proposed by the father did not take place. This time we felt that the separation would be long, but we already understood that it could not be otherwise. We never mentioned our mother's name again."
At this time, Doctor Botkin became very close to the Tsarevich, who was suffering terribly. Evgeniy Sergeevich spent whole nights at his bedside, and the boy once confessed to him: “I love you with all my little heart.” Evgeny Sergeevich smiled. Rarely did he have to smile when talking about this royal child.
“The pain became unbearable. The boy’s screams and cries were heard in the palace, recalled the head of the palace guard, Alexander Spiridovich. – The temperature rose quickly. Botkin never left the child’s side for a minute.” “I am deeply surprised by their energy and dedication,” wrote the teacher of Alexei and the Grand Duchesses, Pierre Gilliard, about doctors Vladimir Derevenko and Evgeniy Botkin. “I remember how, after long night shifts, they were glad that their little patient was safe again. But the improvement of the heir was attributed not to them, but to... Rasputin.”
Evgeniy Sergeevich did not like Rasputin, believing that he was playing at being an old man, without actually being one. He even refused to accept this man into his home as a patient. However, being a doctor, he could not refuse help at all and personally went to the patient. Fortunately, they saw each other only a few times in their lives, which did not prevent the emergence of rumors that Evgeniy Sergeevich was a fan of Rasputin. This was, of course, slander, but it had its own background. Infinitely more than Gregory, Botkin despised those who organized the persecution of this man. He was convinced that Rasputin was just an excuse. “If there had been no Rasputin,” he once said, “then the opponents of the Royal Family and the preparers of the revolution would have created him with their conversations from Vyrubova, if there had been no Vyrubova, from me, from whomever you want.”
"Dear Old Well"
Doctor Botkin gives the crown princesses Maria and Anastasia a ride
For the attitude of Yevgeny Vasilyevich Botkin to the Royal Family, you can choose only one word - love. And the more he got to know these people, the stronger this feeling became. The family lived more modestly than many aristocrats or merchants. The Red Army soldiers in the Ipatiev House were later surprised that the Emperor wore mended clothes and worn-out boots. The valet told them that before the revolution his master wore the same thing and the same shoes. The Tsarevich wore the old nightgowns of the Grand Duchesses. The girls did not have separate rooms in the palace; they lived in twos.
Sleepless nights and hard work undermined Evgeniy Vasilyevich’s health. He was so tired that he fell asleep in the bath, and only when the water cooled down did he struggle to get to bed. My leg hurt more and more, I had to use a crutch. At times he felt very bad. And then he changed roles with Anastasia, becoming her “patient”. The princess became so attached to Botkin that she was eager to serve him soap in the bathroom, kept watch at his feet, perched on the sofa, never missing an opportunity to make him laugh. For example, when a cannon was supposed to fire at sunset, the girl always pretended to be terribly afraid and hid in the farthest corner, covering her ears and peeking out with big, feignedly frightened eyes.
Botkin was very friendly with Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. She had a kind heart. When, at the age of twenty, she began to receive small pocket money, the first thing she did was volunteer to pay for the treatment of a crippled boy, whom she often saw while walking, hobbling on crutches.
“When I listen to you,” she once told Dr. Botkin, “it seems to me that I see clean water in the depths of the old well.” The younger crown princesses laughed and from then on sometimes in a friendly manner called Dr. Botkin “dear old well.”
In 1913, the Royal Family almost lost him. It all started with the fact that Grand Duchess Tatiana, during celebrations in honor of the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov, drank water from the first tap she came across and fell ill with typhus. Evgeniy Sergeevich left his patient, while becoming infected himself. His situation turned out to be much worse, since duty at the princess’s bedside brought Botkin to complete exhaustion and severe heart failure. He was treated by his brother Alexander Botkin, a tireless traveler and inventor who built a submarine during the Russo-Japanese War. He was not only a doctor of science in medicine, but also a captain of the second rank.
Another brother, Pyotr Sergeevich, a diplomat, having learned from a telegram that Evgeny was completely unwell, rushed to Russia from Lisbon, changing from express to express. Meanwhile, Evgeniy Sergeevich felt better. “When he saw me,” wrote Peter, “he smiled with a smile that was so familiar to his loved ones, almost tender, very Russian.” “He scared us,” said the Emperor to Peter Sergeevich. – When you were notified by telegram, I was in great alarm... He was so weak, so overworked... Well, now that’s behind me, God took him under his protection once again. Your brother is more than a friend to me... He takes everything that happens to us to heart. He even shares our illness.”
Great War
Shortly before the war, Evgeniy Sergeevich wrote to children from Crimea: “Support and take care of each other, my dear ones, and remember that every three of you must replace the fourth one with me. The Lord is with you, my beloved ones.” Soon they met, happy - they were one soul.
When the war began, there was hope that it would not last long, that joyful days would return, but these dreams melted away every day.
“My brother visited me in St. Petersburg with his two sons,” recalled Pyotr Botkin. “Today they are both leaving for the front,” Evgeniy simply told me, as if he had said: “They are going to the opera.” I couldn’t look him in the face because I was afraid to read in his eyes what he hid so carefully: the pain of my heart at the sight of these two young lives leaving him for the first time, and maybe forever ... "
“I was appointed to intelligence,” said son Dmitry when parting.
“But you haven’t been appointed yet!” Evgeniy Sergeevich corrected him.
- Oh, it will be soon, it doesn’t matter.
He was actually assigned to intelligence. Then there was a telegram:
“Your son Dmitry was ambushed during the offensive. Considered missing. We hope to find him alive."
Not found. The reconnaissance patrol came under fire from German infantry. Dmitry ordered his men to retreat and remained last, covering the retreat. He was the son and grandson of doctors; fighting for other people's lives was something completely natural for him. His horse returned with a shot through the saddle, and the captured Germans reported that Dmitry had died, giving them his last battle. He was twenty years old.
On that terrible evening, when it became known that there was no more hope, Evgeniy Sergeevich did not show any emotions. When talking to a friend, his face remained motionless, his voice was completely calm. Only when he was left alone with Tatyana and Gleb did he quietly say: “It’s all over. He’s dead,” and cried bitterly. Evgeniy Sergeevich never recovered from this blow.
Only work saved him, and not just him. The Empress and Grand Duchesses spent a lot of time in hospitals. The poet Sergei Yesenin saw the princesses there and wrote:
...Where are pale shadows and sorrowful torments,
They are for the one who went to suffer for us,
Regal hands stretch out,
Blessing them for the hereafter hour.
On a white bed, in a bright glare of light,
The one whose life they want to return is crying...
And the walls of the infirmary tremble
From pity that their chest tightens.
Pulls them closer and closer with an irresistible hand
Where grief puts sadness on the forehead.
Oh, pray, Saint Magdalene,
For their fate.
In Tsarskoye Selo alone, Botkin opened 30 infirmaries. As always, I worked to the limit of human strength. One nurse recalled that he was not just a doctor, but a great doctor. One day, Evgeniy Sergeevich approached the bed of a soldier who came from a peasant background. Due to his severe wound, he did not recover, he only lost weight and was in a depressed state of mind. Things could have ended very badly.
“Darling, what would you like to eat?” – Botkin unexpectedly asked the soldier. “I, your honor, would eat fried pork ears,” he replied. One of the sisters was immediately sent to the market. After the patient ate what he ordered, he began to recover. “Just imagine that your patient is alone,” taught Evgeniy Sergeevich. – Or maybe he is deprived of air, light, nutrition necessary for health? Pamper him."
The secret of a real doctor is humanity. This is what Dr. Botkin once said to his students:
“Once the trust you have acquired in patients turns into sincere affection for you, when they are convinced of your invariably cordial attitude towards them. When you enter the room, you are greeted by a joyful and welcoming mood - a precious and powerful medicine, which will often help you much more than with mixtures and powders... Only a heart is needed for this, only sincere heartfelt sympathy for the sick person. So don’t be stingy, learn to give it with a broad hand to those who need it.”
“You need to treat not the disease, but the patient,” his father Sergei Petrovich liked to repeat. It meant that people are different, they cannot be treated the same. For Evgeniy Sergeevich, this idea received another dimension: you need to remember the patient’s soul, this means a lot for healing.
We could tell a lot more about that war, but we won’t linger. Time to talk about the latest feat of Dr. Evgeniy Sergeevich Botkin.
The day before
The breath of revolution, increasingly foul, drove many crazy. People did not become more responsible; on the contrary, willingly talking about saving Russia, they energetically pushed it towards destruction. One of these enthusiasts was Lieutenant Sergei Sukhotin, an insider in high society circles. Shortly after Christmas '16, he dropped in to see the Botkins. On the same day, Evgeniy Sergeevich invited a front-line soldier, whom he was treating for wounds, to visit - an officer of the Siberian riflemen, Konstantin Melnik. Those who knew him said: “Give him ten men, and he will do the work of hundreds with minimal losses. He appears in the most dangerous places without bowing to bullets. His people say he's under a spell, and they're right."
Sukhotin, with gloating, began to retell yet another gossip about Rasputin - an orgy with young ladies from society, about the officer husbands of these women who brazenly burst into Grigory with sabers, but the police prevented them from finishing him off. The lieutenant did not limit himself to this bullshit, declaring that Rasputin and the Empress’s maid of honor Anna Vyrubova were German spies.
“Forgive me,” the Miller suddenly said, “what you are asserting here is a very serious accusation.” If Vyrubova is a spy, you must prove it.
Sukhotin was stunned, then contemptuously and stupidly began to talk about some kind of intrigue.
– What intrigues? – Konstantin tried to clarify. – If you have evidence, give it to the police. And spreading rumors is pointless and dangerous, especially if it harms Their Majesties.
“I am of the same opinion as Melnik,” Evgeniy Sergeevich intervened, wanting to put an end to this conversation. – Such things cannot be stated without evidence. In any case, we must trust our Sovereign under all circumstances.
Less than a year later, Sukhotin will take part in the murder of Grigory Rasputin. Then he would settle well under the Bolsheviks, marry Leo Tolstoy’s granddaughter Sophia, but he would not live to see forty, crippled by paralysis.
It won't work either three years after talking about how Tatyana Botkina will become the wife of Konstantin Melnik. Botkin will have already been shot by this time. “Trust our Sovereign under any circumstances.” This was an extremely accurate and intelligent recommendation given by a doctor to a seriously ill country. But the time was such that people believed liars most of all.
“Basically, I’m already dead.”
On March 2, 1917, Botkin went to visit the children who lived nearby under the supervision of their landlady Ustinya Alexandrovna Tevyashova. She was a 75-year-old stately old lady - the widow of the Governor General. A few minutes after Evgeniy Sergeevich entered the house, a crowd of soldiers with rifles burst into it.
“You have General Botkin,” an ensign in a hat and a red bow approached Ustinya Alexandrovna.
- Not a general, but a doctor, who came to treat a patient.
It was true, Evgeniy Sergeevich really treated the owner’s brother.
– It’s all the same, we were ordered to arrest all the generals.
“I also don’t care who you should arrest, but I think that when talking to me, the widow of the adjutant general, you, firstly, should take off your hats, and secondly, you can get out of here.”
The taken aback soldiers, led by their leader, took off their hats and left.
Unfortunately, there are not too many people like Ustinya Alexandrovna left in the empire.
The sovereign with his family and that part of his entourage that did not betray them found themselves under arrest. It was allowed to go out only to the garden, where an insolent crowd eagerly watched the Tsar through the bars. Sometimes she showered Nikolai Alexandrovich with ridicule. Only a few looked at him with pain in their eyes.
At this time, revolutionary Petrograd, according to the memoirs of Tatyana Botkina, was preparing for a holiday - the funeral of the victims of the revolution. Since they decided not to call priests, the relatives of the victims stole most of the already few bodies. We had to recruit from the dead some Chinese who died of typhus and unknown dead. They were buried very solemnly in red coffins on the Champ de Mars. A similar event was held in Tsarskoe Selo. There were very few victims of the revolution there - six soldiers who died drunk in the basement of a store. They were joined by a cook who died in the hospital and a rifleman who died while quelling a riot in Petrograd. They decided to bury them under the windows of the Tsar’s office in order to insult him. The weather was beautiful, the buds on the trees were green, but as soon as the red coffins were carried into the park fence to the sounds of “you fell a victim in the fatal struggle,” the sun became clouded and wet snow began to fall in thick flakes, obscuring the insane spectacle from the eyes of the Royal Family.
At the end of May, Evgeniy Sergeevich was temporarily released from custody. The daughter-in-law, the wife of the deceased Dmitry, fell ill. The doctor was told that she was dying, but the young widow managed to get out. Returning back to arrest turned out to be much more difficult; I had to personally meet with Kerensky. He, apparently, tried to dissuade Yevgeny Sergeevich, explaining that soon the Royal Family would have to go into exile, but Botkin was adamant. The place of exile was Tobolsk, where the atmosphere was sharply different from the capital. The Tsar continued to be revered here and was seen as a passion-bearer. They sent sweets, sugar, cakes, smoked fish, not to mention money. Botkin tried to repay this handsomely - a world-famous doctor, he treated for free everyone who asked for help, and took on the completely hopeless. Tatyana and Gleb lived with their father.
Evgeniy Sergeevich’s children remained in Tobolsk - he guessed that going with him to Yekaterinburg was too dangerous. Personally, I was not at all afraid for myself.
As one of the guards recalled, “this Botkin was a giant. On his face, framed by a beard, piercing eyes sparkled from behind thick glasses. He always wore the uniform that the sovereign granted him. But at the time when the Tsar allowed himself to remove his shoulder straps, Botkin opposed this. It seemed that he did not want to admit that he was a prisoner.”
This was seen as stubbornness, but the reasons for Evgeniy Sergeevich’s perseverance lay elsewhere. You understand them by reading it last letter, never sent to brother Alexander.
“In essence, I died, I died for my children, for my friends, for my cause,” he writes. And then he tells how he found faith, which is natural for a doctor - there is too much Christian in his work. He says how important it has become for him to also take care of the Lord. The story is common Orthodox man, but suddenly you realize the full value of his words:
“I am supported by the conviction that “he who endures to the end will be saved.” This justifies my last decision, when I did not hesitate to leave my children as orphans in order to fulfill my medical duty to the end. How Abraham did not hesitate at God’s demand to sacrifice his only son to Him. And I firmly believe that just as God saved Isaac then, He will now save my children, and He Himself will be their father.”
He, of course, did not reveal all this to the children in his messages from Ipatiev’s house. He wrote something completely different:
“Sleep peacefully, my beloved, precious ones, may God protect and bless you, and I kiss and caress you endlessly, as I love you. Your dad...” “He was infinitely kind,” Pyotr Sergeevich Botkin recalled about his brother. “One could say that he came into the world for the sake of people and in order to sacrifice himself.”
The first to die
They were killed gradually. First, the sailors who were looking after the royal children, Klimenty Nagorny and Ivan Sednev, were taken out of the Ipatiev mansion. The Red Guards hated and feared them. They hated them because they allegedly dishonored the honor of sailors. They were afraid because Nagorny - powerful, decisive, the son of a peasant - openly promised to beat them in the face for theft and abuse of royal prisoners. Sednev was silent for the most part, but he was silent so that goosebumps began to run down the backs of the guards. The friends were executed a few days later in the forest along with other “enemies of the people.” On the way, Nagorny encouraged the suicide bombers, but Sednev remained silent. When the Reds were driven out of Yekaterinburg, the sailors were found in the forest, pecked by birds, and reburied. Many people remember their grave strewn with white flowers.
After their removal from Ipatiev’s mansion, the Red Army soldiers were no longer ashamed of anything. They sang obscene songs, wrote obscene words on the walls, and painted vile images. Not all guards liked this. One later spoke with bitterness about the Grand Duchesses: “They humiliated and offended the girls, they spied on the slightest movement. I often felt sorry for them. When they played dance music on the piano, they smiled, but tears flowed from their eyes onto the keys.”
Then, on May 25, General Ilya Tatishchev was executed. Before going into exile, the Emperor offered to accompany him to Count Benckendorff. He refused, citing his wife’s illness. Then the Tsar turned to his childhood friend Nyryshkin. He asked for 24 hours to think about it, to which the Emperor said that he no longer needed Naryshkin’s services. Tatishchev immediately agreed. Very witty and kind person, he greatly brightened up the life of the Royal Family in Tobolsk. But one day he quietly admitted in a conversation with the teacher of the royal children, Pierre Gilliard: “I know that I will not come out of this alive. But I pray for only one thing: that they not separate me from the Emperor and let me die with him.”
They were separated after all - here on earth...
The complete opposite of Tatishchev was General Vasily Dolgorukov - boring, always grumbling. But at the decisive hour he did not turn away, did not chicken out. He was shot on July 10.
There were 52 of them - those who voluntarily went into exile with the Royal Family to share their fate. We named only a few names.
Execution
“I don’t indulge myself in hope, I don’t lull myself into illusions and I look the unvarnished reality straight in the eye,” wrote Evgeniy Sergeevich shortly before his death. Hardly any of them, prepared for death, thought otherwise. The task was simple - to remain ourselves, to remain people in the eyes of God. All prisoners, except the Royal Family, could have bought life and even freedom at any moment, but they did not want to do this.
Here is what the regicide Yurovsky wrote about Yevgeny Sergeevich: “Doctor Botkin was a faithful friend of the family. In all cases, for one or another family need, he acted as an intercessor. He was devoted body and soul to his family and, together with the Romanov family, experienced the severity of their life.”
And Yurovsky’s assistant, executioner Nikulin, once grimaced, undertook to retell the contents of one of Yevgeny Sergeevich’s letters. He remembered the following words there: “...And I must tell you that when the Tsar-Sovereign was in glory, I was with him. And now that he is in misfortune, I also consider it my duty to be with him.”
But these non-humans understood that they were dealing with a saint!
He continued to treat, helping everyone, although he himself was seriously ill. Suffering from cold and kidney colic, back in Tobolsk he gave his fur-lined overcoat to Grand Duchess Maria and the Tsarina. They then wrapped themselves in it together. However, all the doomed supported each other as best they could. The Empress and her daughters looked after their doctor and injected him with medicine. “Suffers very much...” – the Empress wrote in her diary. Another time she told how the Tsar read the 12th chapter of the Gospel, and then he and Dr. Botkin discussed it. We are obviously talking about the chapter where the Pharisees demand a sign from Christ and hear in response that there will be no other sign than the sign of the prophet Jonah: “For as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart earth for three days and three nights." This is about His death and Resurrection.
For people preparing for death, these words mean a lot.
At half past two on the night of July 17, 1918, the arrested were awakened by Commandant Yurovsky, who ordered them to go down to the basement. He warned everyone through Botkin that there was no need to take things, but the women collected some small change, pillows, handbags and, it seems, a small dog, as if they could keep them in this world.
They began to arrange the doomed in the basement as if they were going to be photographed. “There aren’t even chairs here,” said the Empress. The chairs were brought. Everyone - both the executioners and the victims - pretended not to understand what was happening. But the Emperor, who at first held Alyosha in his arms, suddenly put him behind his back, covering him with himself. “That means we won’t be taken anywhere,” Botkin said after the verdict was read out. It was not a question; the doctor's voice was devoid of any emotion.
Nobody wanted to kill people who, even from the point of view of “proletarian legality,” were innocent. As if by agreement, but in fact, on the contrary, without coordinating their actions, the killers began to shoot at one person - the Tsar. It was only by chance that two bullets hit Evgeniy Sergeevich, then the third hit both knees. He stepped towards the Emperor and Alyosha, fell to the floor and froze in some strange position, as if he was lying down to rest. Yurovsky finished him off with a shot to the head. Realizing their mistake, the executioners opened fire on the other condemned prisoners, but for some reason they always missed, especially on the Grand Duchesses. Then the Bolshevik Ermakov used a bayonet and then began shooting the girls in the heads.
Suddenly, from the right corner of the room, where the pillow was moving, a woman’s joyful cry was heard: “Thank God! God saved me!” Staggering, the maid Anna Demidova - Nyuta - rose from the floor. Two Latvians, who had run out of ammunition, rushed to her and bayoneted her. Alyosha woke up from Anna’s scream, moving in agony and covering his chest with his hands. His mouth was full of blood, but he still tried to say: “Mom.” Yakov Yurovsky started shooting again.
Having said goodbye to the Royal Family and her father in Tobolsk, Tatyana Botkina could not sleep for a long time. “Every time, closing my eyelids,” she recalled, “I saw before my eyes pictures of that terrible night: my father’s face and his last blessing; the tired smile of the Emperor, politely listening to the speeches of the security officer; the Empress’s gaze clouded with sadness, directed, it seemed, into God knows what silent eternity. Having mustered the courage to get up, I opened the window and sat on the windowsill to be warmed by the sun. This April, spring really radiated warmth, and the air was unusually clean...”
She wrote these lines sixty years later, perhaps trying to say something very important about those she loved. About the fact that after night comes morning - and as soon as you open the window, Heaven comes into its own.
By the middle of the 19th century, Russian medicine was in a terrible state. Historians of medicine write that most teachers in medical faculties used the same information year after year, ignoring discoveries in their field and shunning innovative approaches. Sometimes the information conveyed to students was medieval, for example, about the liver it was stated that it is “a many times folded intestinal canal,” and there were other inconsistencies that were taught from the departments of respected educational institutions.
At that time (and, apparently, not without reason) it was believed that foreign doctors treated better than domestic ones, so rich patients preferred to see doctors of Prussian origin in their homes. The dominance of German doctors sometimes led to the fact that the doctor could not clearly communicate with his patient due to ignorance of the Russian language.
Indeed, graduates from medical students often went abroad, where medical thought was more progressive. This is what happened with the future great therapist, clinician and physiologist, prominent Russian scientist Sergei Petrovich Botkin. His friend, historian T.N. Granovsky, who lived in the lower floor of his house, noted the extraordinary curiosity of young Botkin and his extraordinary abilities. Returning from many years of traveling through European educational institutions and clinics, the young doctor began his activity with reforms in the medical field. In 1860-1861, he founded a laboratory that was destined to become a research and experimental center. In this laboratory Botkin investigated the influence medicines on the human body, conducted chemical and physical research. This is how experimental trends in therapy, pharmacology, and pathology were born in Russian medicine.
Sergei, born in 1832, was one of 14 children of a wealthy merchant and factory owner. The eldest son, the future famous writer Vasily Botkin, was involved in raising the children in the family. Until the age of 15, the future luminary of Russian medicine was taught by his older brother and friends, including T. N. Granovsky, V. G. Belinsky, A. I. Herzen. A philosophical circle gathered in Botkin’s house, which largely shaped the young man’s views.
Botkin wanted to enroll in the Faculty of Mathematics, but life decreed otherwise, and in the year of admission, a decree was issued to cancel enrollment in any faculties except medicine. With internal resistance, Botkin chose the Faculty of Medicine. If everything had turned out differently, there would have been one more eminent mathematician in Russia, because, as we know, talented people are talented in everything.
Immediately after graduating from Moscow University in 1855 Sergei Petrovich Botkin went with the squad participate in the Crimean company. By that time, hundreds of enemy ships had already landed off the coast of Yevpatoria, representing four European states that opposed Russia - Turkey, France, England and Sardinia. The losses of the Russian side amounted to tens of thousands, there was a continuous stream of wounded. Then Pirogov created field teams of nurses and opened training courses for the first medical care, where anyone could sign up. By the time of the Crimean War, Pirogov had already mastered ether anesthesia, which significantly eased the pain of the wounded during operations. In addition, he used a plaster cast, which made it possible to preserve the limbs of a huge number of wounded people. Botkin, being nearby all the time, studied with the most progressive compatriot physician and absorbed innovations like a sponge.
Thanks to his experimental laboratory at the clinic of internal medicine, Botkin was able to use research to diagnose and treat patients. He introduced mandatory measurement of body temperature with a thermometer, the method of listening to the patient (auscultation) and tapping (percussion), physical examination, and collecting information about the patient’s lifestyle and medical history. This way he received a complete vision of the disease and made an accurate diagnosis. He tirelessly taught students how to diagnose using these methods, which then became an integral part of Russian clinical practice.
It is interesting that Botkin did not get the position of professor of the clinic of internal diseases so easily. It was necessary to overcome a fierce debate, in which, on the one hand, there were admirers of Western doctors, who invited a German professor to this position, and on the other, Botkin’s students, who were indignant against injustice and advocated for their teacher as a progressive young force of Russian medicine. Botkin's theoretical works and his name were already known in professional circles at that time, and he was offered the position of professor and head of the clinic.
Like any bright personality with an innovative approach, Botkin was immediately disliked by envious colleagues, who did not miss an opportunity to fan rumors of a mistake or slander the doctor. It should be noted that Botkin was a real diagnostic ace. His ear was so trained to listen to internal organs through a plesimeter (a device for medically listening to a patient) that no disturbance could escape his attention. One day, envious people had the opportunity to accuse a famous doctor of quackery. Botkin diagnosed one patient with portal vein thrombosis. Such a diagnosis left no hope, and the patient was soon to leave this mortal coil. However, he lived for six whole weeks, which gave his enemies reason to doubt the diagnosis. An autopsy after the death of the patient showed the absolute correctness of the diagnosis, and the spiteful critics were put to shame. This was the great scientist’s finest hour, he received lucrative offers, and there was no end to rich patients.
In 1872, Botkin had the honor of treating the ailing Catherine II. Having saved her from weakness, he extended her health for many years, became the royal physician and simply a welcome guest at court.
One of the main merits of S.P. Botkin as a scientist was the promotion of a new theory of medicine. This happened almost simultaneously with the emergence of a new theory in Germany, where its author was a professor, under whose supervision the best of Russian doctors studied. Botkin's new theory was that reflexes are the basis of all life activity. Whereas Virchow, putting forward his theory, spoke about the beginning of everything thanks to the cell. Both of these theories, independently of each other, were opposed to humoral, or vital, medicine, based on the theory of the vital spirit underlying every phenomenon. This theory unshakably dominated medicine for many centuries. Thanks to the emergence of two new theories of medicine, two directions arose - anatomical, according to Virchow, and physiological, according to Botkin.
Botkin's fundamental view of the body was its inextricable relationship with the surrounding world. Adapting to the environment, the body changes its metabolism and forms new properties. These new characteristics of the organism are inherited and determine survival in a changing environment. Botkin saw the origin of the disease in the body’s inability to respond to the external environment or qualities passed on by previous generations.
Botkin saw the failure of Virchow's cell theory in its limited functionality: the disease, according to Virchow, is caused by the transfer of pathogenic microorganisms from one cell to another or, in the second version, together with blood or lymph. The theory of the organism as a “country” consisting of cells seemed limited to Botkin; he contrasted it with the doctrine of the organism as a single whole controlled by the nervous system. In this regard, Botkin paid great attention to the study of various parts of the brain. Empirically, he discovered the centers of sweating, hematopoiesis, and lymph formation. Thus, he came to the conclusion that the treatment of the disease consists of selective influence on each of the nerve centers responsible for a particular process or organ. Unfortunately, he was unable to complete the proofs and research in favor of his theory. However, he managed to prove the main point of his theory: the unity of the body as a whole, neurological and physiological connections between organs and systems of the body, treatment not of the disease, but of the patient.
Among the exceptional discoveries of S.P. Botkin most belongs to the diagnosis and etiology of diseases. Thus, he discovered and proved the infectious nature of catarrhal (now Botkin’s disease, viral hepatitis A) and hemorrhagic jaundice (Botkin-Weil jaundice), developed the diagnosis and clinical manifestations of a “wandering” kidney. Botkin successfully fought the spread of epidemics, he was tasked with reducing mortality and improving sanitary conditions in Russia, and therefore he undertook to reorganize Russian healthcare, but no resources were allocated to him.
An outstanding Russian scientist and doctor, Sergei Petrovich Botkin died in 1889 in France. Two of his 12 children followed in their father's footsteps. Evgeniy, who served as a physician for the Romanov royal family, followed them into exile, where he was shot, refusing to leave the disgraced family. Later he was canonized.
