Alexey Lukich Lyubushin: 30 years of service to the sick

The article presents materials about the life and activities of Professor A. L. Lyubushin, MD, a graduate of the Medical Faculty of Moscow University in 1894. He made a significant contribution to the development of Russian psychiatry. The main area of his scientific activity focused on psychiatry and neurology. Being the author of works on nervous and mental illnesses, he was one of the first in Russia to describe microscopic changes in the cerebral cortex in early dementia. He paid special attention to the organization of psychiatric care. His work at the Preobrazhenskaya Psychiatric Hospital gave him the opportunity to write a number of works on the organization of hospitals, their management and the organization of staff. As a senior resident and then the chief doctor of the hospital, A. L. Lyubushin took an active part in the establishment of new hospital departments. During the First World War, the psychiatrist was actively involved in helping mentally ill soldiers when he worked for the Russian Red Cross Society. He was a talented teacher. After he was elected a privatdozent of Moscow University in 1905, A. L. Lyubushin passed on his knowledge and love for science to young doctors until the last days of his life. The methodological foundation of the research consisted of a combination of three approaches: source analysis, historicalcontextual approach, and biographical method. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that, based on archival materials and the physician’s publications, his intellectual portrait has been reconstructed, and the key stages and directions of his professional career have been identified. The obtained results fill a gap in historiography and expand the understanding of A. L. Lyubushin’s role in the history of the Preobrazhenskaya Hospital in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The set of materials introduced into scholarly circulation expands the source base and creates favourable conditions for further research in the field of the history of Moscow’s municipal psychiatric service. The results of the study have practical significance as a source of previously unknown historical facts about the resident physician and later chief physician of the Preobrazhenskaya Hospital (now PKB No. 4 named after P. B. Gannushkin) and hold practical value for the institution.