Epidemic and sanitary charts and tables of the second half of the XIX century as the “health passports” for Russian territories

The title of this article reproduces the intentions of the creators of the health cards and the hopes of their modern viewers. Judging by the statements, they wanted to see and show the state of the sanitary and epidemiological situation in the Russian Empire and wanted to do it as reliably and clearly as possible. The article’s authors asked themselves a question: have these desires and hopes come true, that is — are now the tables of sanitary statistics and disease maps “health passports” of various administrative and territorial units of the Russian Empire? Can historians use them as reliable evidence? In order to answer this question, it was necessary to reconstruct then existing system for recording and collecting data on infectious patients, diseases and pathogenicity, ways of their aggregation and representation. Only then would it be possible to find out how these data were applied to conditional terrain images, why either manufactured terrain plans or an administrative map of the empire were used, what was visible and what was in the dark zone.

The article’s authors found that the resources available in post-reform Russia did not make it possible to make the collection of sanitary statistics total for the entire territory timely, and even more so to organise a retest of practical information. The supply of information depended on the density of the network of medical institutions in the empire and doctors’ ideas about the value of such information. This circumstance ensured fragmented, multi-temporal and spatial asymmetry in showing the sanitary condition of the Russian Empire and the morbidity of its inhabitants. On this basis, medical historians are advised to read these mediums in the reverse perspective: high morbidity rates should be read as evidence of well-organised medical care (i.e. relative epidemic well-being) and vice versa.

Contribution. All co-authors made an equal contribution to the research and preparation of the article for publication.

Conflict of interest. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgement. The research was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 19-48-04110) and The German Research Foundation (DFG).

Received: November 30, 2020 / Accepted: November 25, 2021 / Published: February 09, 2022