Higher Medical Course

Medical school education lasts 6 years. The rirst 2 years provide a broad program of general education in basic subjects such as Anatomy, Physiology, Histology and medical Latin.

Course work includes many nonmedical subjects, such as history of the 20^th century, philosophy and ethics, and "paramedical" subjects such as chemistry, physics and mathematics.

The third, the 4^th and 5^th years are called the Senior Course. During the third year students study pathology, pharmacology, general surgery, surgical anatomy. Students learn to perform three basic operations-appendectomy, tracneotomy, and correction for ectopic pregnancy - on cadavers. In the course of propaedeutics students learn to recognize the symptoms of illness, methods of eliciting them, diagnosis, and theoretical aspects of pathology. The course also includes subjects such as physician's ethics and deontology.

Clinical practice is begun during the Senior Course. Students gather anamnesis, perform physical examination, observe instrumental diagnostic procedures and treatment, and analyze laboratory data under their professors' supervision.

In the fourth and fifth years students receive more specialized training in genetics and otalaryngology. The sixth year future doctors are no longer called students, but “subordinates”, work and study in different departments under professors' supervision, have night duties twice a month, and attend grand rounds and lectures.

Ivan Michailovich Sechenov

Ivan Michailovich Sechenov was born in 19th century. He attended the Military Engineering School where he acquired a sound knoledge of physics and mathematics. These subjects helped him to investigate the organism's intricate vital activity.

After graduating from the Medical Faculty of the Moskov University he was sent abroad where he acguainted himself withe the great naturalists of the 19th century. He worked in the laboratories, attended lectures on comparativ anatomy and physiology, studied physiological chemistry. He won the respect of his teachers for his initiative and ability to pose scientific problems and to solve them by experimentation.

Most of the European physiologists considered that the so-called psychical activity could not be studied by physiological methods.

Sechenov stated that this form of vital activity was subordinated to physiological laws and should be studied by experimental analysis. In his doctor's thesis Sechenov advanced the idea of the unity of the forces operating in organic and inorganic nature, unity of the organism.

In his treatise ''Reflexes of the Brain'' he developed the idea that all acts of conscious and unconscious life are reflexes.

He considered that the entire psychical life is stimulated and main faind by environmental influences.

Sechenov combined his reseach work with teaching. He traind a number of physiologists and physicians.

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Reflex ['ri:fleks]

Psychical ['saikikэl]

Naturalists ['n tsrэlist]

Intricate ['intrikit]

Acquaint [э'kweint]

Law [lo:]

Thesis ['Qi:sis]

Treatise ['tri:tiz]

Conscious ['konsэs]