Sir James Wylie, 1<sup>st</sup> Baronet (Russian: ïÃÂúþò ÃÂðÃÂøÃÂûÃÂõòøàÃÂøÃÂûûøõ, Yakov Vasilyevich Villiye; 13 November 1768 âÂÂ2-March 1854), was a Scottish physician who served as a battlefield surgeon and as a court physician in the Russian Empire from 1790 until his death in 1854, and as president from 1808 to 1838 of both the Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy at Saint Petersburg and its annex at Moscow. He is considered one of the foremost contributors to the development of military medicine in Russia by some by whom the role of the indigenous Russian Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov as the "father of combat medicine" may appear to be less valued.
James Wylie was born on 13 November 1768 at Kincardine-on-Forth, a Scottish seaport. His parents were Janet (née Meiklejohn) and William Wylie, he a carrier, Forth cargo transporter and farmer. James was the second of eight children, he and four brothers surviving infancy.
Inevitably, young James would have spent much time around Kincardine's busy harbour, well on its way to becoming one of Scotland's busiest by the turn of the century, and he would likely have listened to many stories about distant, exotic places from encounters with the sailors there. Nevertheless, after leaving school, James had an ambition to study medicine and he was therefore apprenticed to the local doctor, although this didn't start well as "being rather hardly used he ran off to sea" according to a grand-niece. Upon learning of this, his mother walked 20 miles to the small seaport of Cramond-on-Forth, retrieved James from a sloop lying at anchor there and escorted him the 20 miles back to Kincardine, after which James returned to his apprenticeship, completed it, and thereby gained admittance to the University of Edinburgh.
Wylie successfully completed his studies at the university between 1786 and 1789. These years coincided with a golden era of that medical school's history, during which it arguably provided Europe's best medical instruction. Wylie would likely have encountered the university's foremost clinical teachers of their day in anatomy, in clinical medicine and physiology and in chemistry. This, together with acquired knowledge of the medical school's teaching methods and his observations of the advanced structure and layout of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary were major influences on Wylie and doubtless instrumental in his subsequent work in expanding and improving medical instruction in Russia, in expanding and improving military & civilian medical services there, and in his major contribution to Russian pharmacology.
Wylie left the university without graduating, not uncommon in those days, and in 1790, at the suggestion of John Rogerson, from Dumfries, a physician to Catherine the Great, he moved to Russia. To the Russians, who found his name impossible to pronounce, he was known as Villie.
Until well into the 19<sup>th</sup> century Russia had little in the way of an organised profession of medicine. Treatment for the Imperial Court and nobility was hired from abroad, and for the lower classes it was mainly in the hands of the clergy.
In accordance with Russian requirements he sat, and passed, the Russian State Medical Board examination for the right to practise medicine there, then worked for a time as medical attendant to the family of Prince Galitzin. He later enlisted in the Russian military, being appointed on 25 December 1790 a surgeon-in-ordinary to the elite Eletsky regiment, stationed at that time in Lithuania.
Wylie was surprised that only officers received medical assistance, with lower ranks thus more likely to succumb to their wounds, infections and diseases. He resolved to expand battlefield medicine to include the treatment also of enlisted men, something unheard of within the Russian army at that time. He would later enforce this practice when he had attained a position enabling him to do so.
Wylie had been required to conduct a great many surgical operations during his regiment's involvement in the PolishâÂÂRussian War of 1792 and the extremely bloody 1794 Koà Âciuszko Uprising that culminated in the Battle of Praga, and he soon attracted attention by his surgical successes and the improvements that he had brought to battlefield medical treatment. One of those attracted was a Colonel Fenshaw who employed Wylie tutor one of his sons, and it was over this period that Wylie became fluent in Russian.
What particularly made Wylie's reputation was his treatment for malaria, known then as intermittent fever, and common among soldiers and officers. Wylie had wrestled with this disease from his first days within the regiment. For it, he devised his own medication, this being recognised in January 1793 with a special award by the commanders of the regiment.
Over this period, Wylie worked hard to educate himself via additional medical studies, a difficult to do in a country having few books on medicine at that time.
One of his operations during this early military service involved successful extraction of an unusually-large stone that had formed within a soldier's bladder, for which Wylie received high praise from his Headquarters Physician. Wylie also successfully performed a particularly-rare operation to extract a bullet embedded in a soldier's lumbar vertebra.
In December 1794, Wylie finally received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, this by King's College, Aberdeen, in those days the degree of Doctor of Medicine being generally awarded there "in recognition of general and professional attainments".
He resigned from the army in November 1795 upon appointment as family physician to Count Boris Stroganov at the Count's country house near Saint Petersburg. He also commenced private practice nearby the Imperial Court, his reputation growing quickly and attracting many society clients.
In November the following year, Catherine the Great died and the Russian crown passed to her son Paul who became Tsar Paul I<sup>st</sup>. Wylie's surgical skill, boldness and determination, plus the greatest good fortune, would soon land him important appointments at this tsarâÂÂs imperial Court.
At some point after commencing private practice in Saint Petersburg, Wylie had reacquainted himself with Dr Rogerson, a physician to Catherine the Great who had earlier suggested to him a career in Russia and had continued in a medical capacity within the new Imperial Court of Tsar Paul. Soon, Wylie's unremarkable act would be the agent in utterly changing the course of his life.
Rogerson later contacted his compatriot when he and a German surgeon were in despair at their attempts in using a catheter to remove a stone from the urinary bladder of Baron Otto von Blom, the Danish ambassador to the Russian court and a friend of tsar Paul. Wylie visited the Imperial Palace and successfully performed the lithotomy with a trocar deftly improvised out of the catheter, soon afterwards finding himself appointed Court Surgeon (25 February 1798). Not only that: he was simultaneously appointed Court Councillor within Imperial Russia's formal Table of Ranks, this an equivalent ranking to that of an army Captain and requiring him to be formally addressed as "Your Excellency" ("ÃÂðÃÂõ òÃÂÃÂþúþñûðóþÃÂþôøõ").
Later, being the only surgeon with enough courage to perform the first laryngotomy operation in Russia, it being previously unheard of there, he saved the life of a man about to suffocate. This happened to be Count Ivan Kutaisov, the tsar's barber, closest confidant and fixer, and ennobled with the title of Count. The tsar quickly responded by appointing Wylie his (July 1799), providing him rooms within the Imperial palace "to be kept near to the emperor", and also appointing him Physician to the heir apparent (Grand Duke Alexander).
Wylie's position nevertheless remained very insecure for his good fortune would have aroused much jealousy in a Court where intrigue and violence were no strangers. Nevertheless, he soon became an essential companion for the tsar. Wylie would accompany the him on his travels, memorably during the tsar's formal visit to exotic and Islamic Kazan in remote Tatarstan, to see for himself the city that had been rebuilt by his mother Catherine the Great after being burnt to the ground in a revolt against her rule.
In March 1800, almost certainly at the tsar's direction, the Medical College awarded Wylie the title Doctor of Medicine and Surgery "for his skills and knowledge in medical science and for his success in the treatment of diseases" despite its earlier dismissal of a submission made by him, he being also made an honorary member of that body.
After Paul I was assassinated by a group of disaffected military officers on 23 March 1801, Wylie was the first doctor on the scene. Later, Paul's body was handed over to Wylie and two other Scots doctors to dissect. Thereafter, Wylie never mentioned whether or not he had found marks of violence on the body. Wylie would no doubt have been aware of the prospect of turmoil on the streets if the facts of the tsar's demise became known, and the potential for that to diminish the standing of the incoming tsar. He diplomatically certified the cause of death to be apoplexy. The next day he embalmed Paul's distorted facial features to make them presentable for a public viewing prior to burial. Wylie's wise judgement and medical skills in this matter were welcomed across the Imperial Court.
The death of Tsar Paul ushered in the reign of his son Grand Duke Alexander who became Tsar Alexander I<sup>st</sup>, he quickly establishing himself as a moderate, courteous and benevolent monarch.
Also imbued with the values of the Enlightenment, around the year 1809, the new tsar had made a start on plans to initiate Russia's transition to representative government and to abolish serfdom but had made the grim decision to put these aside due to opposition within his Imperial Court and hostility to him among the masses concerned about the spread of French revolutionary concepts across Europe and the threat to monarchies stemming from Napoleon's past rhetoric and actions there.
Wylie retained his position in the Imperial Court: Tsar Alexander re-appointed him to his former position, and later that year his role was upgraded to that of the tsar's personal Body Surgeon and Physician. He therefore retained his influence among the courtiers, along with his many privileges. In time, he was to become a favourite confidant of the tsar, accompanying him on all his travels, very many of these across vast distances. He was to remain Body Surgeon and Physician until the tsar's death in 1825.
In September 1804 Wylie was awarded the Order of Saint Vladimir 4<sup>th</sup> class, the first of many awards received in his service to Russia.
Around 1804, concerns had re-emerged in Russia about the stability of Europe posed by Napoleon. That year, the tsar invited Wylie into military service, already familiar to him, appointing him Medical Inspector of the Imperial Guard. From this point, the tsar would routinely detach Wylie from his Court duties to enable him to participate in Russia's military conflicts whenever they might occur.
For Wylie, who was at the time also teaching students at Saint Petersburg's Medical-Surgical Academy, this new appointment began a pattern of both teaching military medicine and the personal in-field application of military medicine bundled together with his responsibilities as the tsar's Body Surgeon and Physician. Wylie would continue this pattern for the remainder of his long, busy career.
In early 1805, Russia, Austria and Britain formed a coalition against further French encroachment within Europe, with war then breaking out in October that year. Ten or so indecisive actions in Austria that month between Austrian and French forces were followed during the following month by battles in Austria between French and incomplete Russian forces at Schöngrabern and Wischau. In September 1805, Tsar Alexander joined the campaign in Austria, and he was accompanied, as always, by Wylie. At Wischau, Wylie was on the field of battle directing the Russian medical field services there. He showed great courage there, nearly losing his life when his horse was shot, and again when a cannon ball landed two steps away from him.
The decisive battle of the Austrian campaign took place on 2 December when the entire Russian force and a partial Austrian one engaged Napoleon's entire force at the Battle of Austerlitz, north of Vienna. Napoleon got to fight this battle at a sight and in a manner of his own choosing. The young and militarily-inexperienced Tsar Alexander had considered it his personal responsibility to lead the Russian forces. This, together with co-ordination difficulties common to coalition armies, and failures within the army of Austria, put the alliance armies on the back foot. The battle concluded towards twilight in comprehensive defeat for the Russian/Austrian force, its casualties extraordinarily high.
Wylie had accompanied the tsar throughout, it later being noted that he was one of the few that had remained with the tsar in the heat of the battle.
There followed a stampede of departing Austrian and Russian regiments. To re-establish order within his forces, the tsar had to rejoin the army command as soon as possible, but it had disappeared. The tsar, who's carriage had also disappeared, headed south-west on horseback towards a meeting place agreed in the event of the battle being lost, his entourage being solely Wylie, a coachman, an equerry and two Cossacks. The journey became an ordeal. They soon came under fire, cannon balls whistling overhead. Just paces away from the tsar, Wylie's horse was wounded by grapeshot. When later casting a glance around him, the tsar became aware that his retinue had been dispersed and he was now accompanied solely by the equerry and Wylie, who had changed his horse. Further on, cannonball landed close by, covered the tsar in earth, and shortly after that his small group was swept along with a disorderly crowd of runaways, bringing them back onto the abandoned battlefield where their horses trod mainly on corpses. They were subsequently interrupted at a ditch which the tsar, a mediocre horseman, hesitated to leap but eventually crossed with the equerry's assistance and they continued their search. Later, weary and having difficulty holding himself in the saddle, the tsar dismounted in a quite spot to sit on the grass. At this quiet spot, high emotions soon became evident on the tsar's face, perhaps his mind now at liberty to reflect on all the unnecessary deaths among his troops. In drenching rain they passed villages crammed with drunken soldiers who didn't recognise their tsar. It was still raining heavily late at night when they arrived at a large market town where the found that Emperor Francis of Austria had already found refuge. Here they eventually found an empty hut where the tsar slept on a litter of straw. Later, with the tsar awakened by a stomach disorder, Wylie left on horseback in search of some wine for him. Being refused this by the Austrian emperor's entourage, he begged some as a last resort from friendly Cossacks bivouacked along the roadside. Returning to the hut, he soothed his patient's condition with a preparation of hot wine mixed with camomile and drops of opium. The remainder of the tsar's retinue only rejoined them late in the night.
Three days later, the allied coalition fell apart when Austria entered into a formal peace treaty with France.
A new coalition against France involving Russia, Britain, Prussia, Saxony, and Sweden was formed within months of the collapse of the fourth coalition.
From December 1806 to June 1807 there were three indecisive battles involving Russian and French forces in Poland at Pultusk, Eylau and Heilsberg. Prior to the Battle of Eylau in February 1807 the tsar had put Wylie in charge of organising a general hospital for field forces about 15 miles further east at Königsberg for the 20,000 wounded, 17,000 of them Russians.
These battles were followed by a major engagement on in June 1807 at the Battle of Friedland in East Prussia. there, Wylie was put in charge of the provision of the Russian army's medical services. It became the first occasion that Russian wounded were to be dressed in the field of battle, this necessarily taking place under the fire of cannon, and with the doctors often treating the enemy's wounded as well as their own. The battle inflicted overwhelming defeat on the Russian forces.
In March 1807 the tsar had appointed him as Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health, this within the Ministry of War.
Wylie had attended all but one of the Russian army's battles under this coalition. For his efforts during 1806 and 1807, Wylie was decorated by General Benningsen, the army's commander. The tsar also awarded him another Order of Saint Vladimir, this one being of the 2<sup>nd</sup> class.
The Russian army's defeat at Friedland in June 1807 led to the signing of a Franco-Russian peace treaty between Tsar Alexander and Napoleon at Tilsit in July 1807, this nowadays generally considered the pinnacle of Napoleon's power. Wylie had attended the tsar at Tilsit.
Wylie's battlefield work to that point in time was to be instrumental in his appointment, via an edict of June 1808, as Manager of the War Department's Medical Section. In Wylie's reply to the Minister of Defence accepting the post he wrote:"I will endeavour to do my best to improve every institution of military medicine, even the smallest. By my own example I will encourage my subordinates to do everything for the benefit of the country and will stress the serious nature of this".
On 31 July 1808, Wylie became responsible for all academic training of military medicine within Russia as a result of his election as president of both Saint Peterburg's Medical-Surgical Academy (renamed that year as Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy) and its sister annex in Moscow, positions he held until 1838.
Combined with his 1807 appointment as Army Medical Board of Health, Wylie's concurrent involvement in both the teaching of military medicine and the personal in-field application of military medicine of his earlier years had now become substantially magnified into concurrent oversight of all academic teaching of military medicine throughout Russia and responsibility for the in-field application of military medicine throughout all of Russia's armies. These dual responsibilities continued for most of his remaining career in Russia.
The period of Russia's collaboration with Napoleon lasted until December 1810 when the tsar disobeyed one its many highly-damaging terms and opened Russian ports to neutral ships.
When Russia's collaboration with napoleon ended in December,1810 Alexander was certain that this would not be the end of the matter. His key government departments were instructed to begin preparations for a renewal of hostilities. In time, a small but highly skilled Russian spy cell in Paris and the astute Russian ambassador there were able to provide the tsar with early warning to indicate that Napoleon was planning to invade Russia during summertime in 1812.
Russia's Imperial Ministry of War immediately commenced arrangements for massive increases in, inter alia, recruitment and training for reserve army battalions and militia units, cavalry horses, artillery pieces and shells, rifles and bullets, uniforms, stored rations, wagons and animals to haul the army's field equipment and rations.
Wylie's 1807 appointment was added to in 1812 with his appointment as Director Army Medical Department within the Ministry of War, a position he held until 1836. The combination of these oversight roles enabled Wylie to lose no time in likewise preparing Russian military medicine for the oncoming war. In late 1811, his task was quantified to one of providing medical services for an army of 300,000, including no less than 500 doctors. This was done. [NB: These matters are covered in more detail within a stand-alone paragraph below that provides a full account of Wylie's lifetime contribution to structuring the army's delivery of medical aid to its wounded.]
On 24 June 1812, a French force of about 200,000 crossed the Nemen river into Lithuanian Russia, the initial wave of about 615,000 troops in total by the end of the French campaign within Russia. This ushered in an unrelenting period of repeated deadly battles until the surviving French forces, just 18% of their original number, scrambled back across the Nemen in mid-December 1812. These did so with almost none of their carefully bred and trained army horses â so priceless in war â and with none of their loot from Moscow other than the women's warm fur coats that many had worn on their outwards march.
Wylie would personally direct the Russian army's medical services in the major battles held within Russia at Vitebsk, Smolensk, Borodino, Tarutino, Maloyaroslavets, Vyasma and Krasnoi, and the subsequent major ones held during 1813-1814 at Lützen, Bautzen, Dresden, Kulm, Leipzig, Brienne, Bar-sur-Aube, Arcis-sur-Aub<nowiki/>e, and Paris.
Tsar Alexander commanded the Russian 1<sup>st</sup> and 2<sup>nd</sup> Armies in their initial responses to the invasion, then returned to St. Petersburg leaving Wylie in the field augmented with any other doctors that could be spared from elsewhere, including civil hospitals. At the battle of Vitebsk and thereafter he was free to direct his entire efforts to wounded soldiers and officers, he accompanying the Russian army on all of its remaining journey eastward to a camp nearby Moscow. After the French retreat from Moscow, Wylie accompanied the Russian army via carriage or sledge, on horseback or on foot as dictated by the terrain and weather, on its westward pursuit of Napoleon's forces all the way to Vilnius just short of the Neman river.
Of the battles that took place within Russia, those at Smolensk (16-18 August), Borodino (7 September) and Maloyaroslavets (24 October), were all particularly bloody.
The Borodino battle, with Moscow at stake, was the deadliest single-day battle of the Napoleonic Wars and one of the bloodiest single-day battles in military history until the First Battle of the Marne in 1914. More than a quarter of a million took part, the entire French force being pitted against the combined Russian 1<sup>st</sup> and 2<sup>nd</sup> armies. The battlefield, about 88 miles west of Moscow was almost the last realistic terrain for Russia's army to make a stand in defence of that city. Accompanying the battle until petering out towards its end was a non-stop, thunderous roar of discharges from some 1,224 artillery pieces in place there, the air thick with the smoke from that. The battlefield was left littered with dead horses, bloodstained corpses, abandoned cannon and wounded men in agony. The French had fired off 90,000 artillery rounds that day, leaving them enough for just one more battle, and on the following day Napoleon ordered his soldiers to collect all of the cannon balls scattered there.
About 44,000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded in this battle. Wylie had arranged to have multiple tents set up beyond the battlefield to serve as a central surgical operations centre staffed with surgeons, nurses, and support staff. He is said to have personally performed a remarkably large number of operations there without differentiating between wounded friend and foe. It quickly became crowded outside the tents, with large numbers of Russian and French wounded being carried in all day, and at any time hundreds of others prostrate on the grass there recovering from surgery. Wylie also attended the battlefield, as when seeing to the mortally wounded General Prince Pyotr Bagration, the commander-in-chief of 2<sup>nd</sup> Army.
After the exhausted opposing forces had come to a standstill in the late afternoon, Wylie later took up an opportunity to ride in darkness with General Platov and his force of Cossack horseback skirmishers on a bold extended foray across the French front lines.
The Russian force withdrew from the Borodino battlefield on the day after the battle, but did so as major strategic victors. They re-assembled at Mojaisk further east toward Moscow. Many of the Russian wounded had been conveyed in carts to places of safety during the battle, with all wounded then borne with the army to Mojaisk.
In discussing this battle with a British visitor to Saint Petersburg in 1830, Wylie told him that 16,000 wounded had been seen by the medical staff there, and there was a total of 567 amputations of legs and arms.
Twenty seven years after the battle, almost to the day, during inauguration ceremonies at the Borodino battlefield for a monument built there to honour the Russian army's efforts during 1812, Tsar Nicholas presented Wylie with a signed Imperial Rescript praising him. [The Rescript's lengthy contents are stated within the Approbatory Letters and Orations paragraph below.]
At a famous high-stakes meeting involving the army's Commander-in-Chief Mikhail Kutuzov and his primary generals, held in a shack just west of Moscow six days after the Borodino battle, it was decided to abandon that city without a fight because it would be significantly more disadvantageous to Napoleon if the Russian army was preserved for the time being. After passing through Moscow, the Russian army, initially feigned retreat on the main road to its south-west but doubled back across county to a hidden encampment set up off one of the main roads heading to the city's south.
On September 14, Napoleon arrived in Moscow expecting to be met by a city representative offering him the keys to the city, and to also to find supplies there. Instead, he found almost the entire population evacuated and the Russian army apparently still in retreat. Early the next morning, fires set broke out throughout the city, destroying any possibility that the French force could have winter quarters there.
The impact of the fires upon Napoleon's forces was strategically very beneficial to the Russian army. Initially no one admitted responsibility. Whatever he knew or suspected about the fires, the tsar spoke publicly of them as a tragedy, this allowing suspicion to fall upon Napoleon for the deed and aligning with his existing strategy of fostering fury at Napoleon within his Imperial Court, his army and wider Russia. About 12 years after the fires, Count RostopchÃÂn, Governor-General of Moscow at the time of the fires, admitted responsibility for it. He later also set alight his palace at Tarutino, knowing that it would soon become of use to the French, who having finally located the Russian army in that vicinity, had detached some of its force to camp nearby. [NB: in a memoir written 45 years later, its subject mentions visiting Paris in May 1814 when Tsar Alexander and Wylie were there following its capture some weeks beforehand. He described his becoming on good terms with Wylie who told him, in the company also of Rostopchin's son, how he, Rostopchin, that son, General Platov and Sir Robert Wilson (a British officer attached to the Russian army) had been breakfasting together for a final time at Rostopchin's palace but upon seeing the advance guard of the French army coming up the road they had joined in hurriedly setting fire to the palace.]
Despite the lack of supplies and decent shelter resulting from the fires, Napoleon prolonged their stay, expecting a message from Tsar Alexander seeking terms that never came. With snowflakes heralding the oncoming winter he eventually decided to order a retreat commencing 19 October, this proving to be disastrously late.
Anxious to avoid lack of shelter and mass starvation for his army on its westward retreat out of Russian territory, Napoleon had to avoid the war-ravaged route on which it had travelled to that point. He planned to move south east, eventually turning northwest onto a route beyond Maloyaroslavets that would provide his forces with both sustenance and an eventual return to the former route fairly close to the point of his army's entry into Russia. Advised of this movement by army scouts, Kutusov, who to this point had been content for the Russian army to await replenishment of his army with new inductees and demolishing minor French ventures out of Moscow, now ordered the Russian army to race south to block further French movement in that direction. The armies came together at the savage, high-stakes Battle of Maloyaroslavets, during which the town changed hands at least eight times. The French force achieved a short-lived tactical victory. At two in the morning after the battle Kutuzov retired his entire army further south, positioning it astride the road and blocking any French movement past that point other than via another Borodino-like battle. This being out of the question for them, the French headed back to the devastated route westwards. Wylie was with the Russian army during these events.
The outcome of the pre-war efforts of the Medical Department of the Imperial Ministry of War was impressive. Russian military doctors had worked throughout this campaign as part of a coherent system to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield for recuperation or for surgery at field hospitals. This complex mechanism was set up by Wylie.
With the departure of French forces from Russian territory, Tsar Alexander felt that Europe's chance to finally be rid of Napoleon would slip away unless the Russian army pursued them. At some personal risk, he brushed aside considerable opinion that Napoleon would no longer be any threat to Russia, and in early 1813, via outstanding diplomacy conducted with states that had become puppet allies of Napoleon, he formed a coalition that eventually included, inter alia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Württemburg, Baden, Saxony and Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Hostilities against French forces were then resumed through Poland, Prussia and eventually into France. Apart from a nine-week mid-year truce, this campaign entailed unrelenting minor and major battles and numerous skirmishes involving small detached army units until the tsar's coalition forces stormed into Paris on 31 March 1814.
Wylie resumed his journey with the Russian army when its pursuit of Napoleon's force began in 1813, continuing with it until the coalition forces entered Paris, By then, had accompanied the main Russian force for its entire journey from Vitebsk to Moscow and then from Moscow to Paris, and present at all of their battles other than numerous skirmishes between detachments of each army. During his entire involvement with the Russian army to that point in time, he had by then been wounded three times.
Particularly bloody were the battles at Dresden and Liepzig.
At the battle of Dresden on 26 and 27 August 1813, the alliance forces of Russia and Prussia together with those of recent alliance partner Austria were pitted against those of France and Saxony. Austrian general, Karl von Schwartzenberg was in overall command of the alliance forces. The battle ended with a conclusive victory to Napoleon, leaving about 15,000 coalition soldiers wounded or killed. Tsar Alexander and Wylie were there, Wylie likely sharing with his coalition counterparts the oversight of medical attention to those soldiers not killed outright. He personally amputated both legs of the mortally wounded allied general Jean Moreau, these shattered by a cannonball as he was standing next to Tsar Alexander.
At the battle of Liepzig that took place from 16 to 19 October 1813, an incomplete but nevertheless large contingent of the armies allied at that point in time (Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden and Mecklenburg-Schwerin) amassed outside the city to strike a decisive blow against the French forces there, the alliance forces being boosted during the battle by a large number of Napoleon's conscripts from Saxony defecting en-mass to the allied forces. Despite the alliance forces once again suffering co-ordination difficulties, wholesale defeat of the French forces was clear to the allies by early on the fourth day of battle, the French then continuing a retreat that they had clandestinely commenced after dusk the day before, via the city centre, and the alliance armies urgently battling their way into the city centre in an attempt to forestall that retreat.
The battle was the bloodiest of the Napoleonic Wars. Over 400,000 rounds of artillery ammunition had been expended and casualties were shockingly high â 80,to 100 thousand killed, wounded or missing. In visiting Saint Petersburg, an American physician George Bacon Wood met and conversed at length with Wylie a few years prior to the latter's death. In talking about the battle, Wylie told him that on that last day of the battle he had taken charge of 40,000 wounded, these not just wounded alliance soldiers but also wounded French soldiers left by Napoleon to die on the battlefield.
With this battle decided, Napoleon's entire 1812-1813 campaign had become a total failure, and he now directed his forces westward towards safety beyond the river Rhine.
Later (in 1814) after re-instatement of the monarchy in France, the new king would award Wylie the Legion of honour for Russian field medics and surgeons treating wounded French soldiers along with their wounded countrymen, as had notably taken place at this battle and at the battle of Friedland in 1807.
Following their entry into Paris on 31 March 1814, Tsar Alexander and his army remained there until Napoleon had been exiled to Elba in April and the accession of Louis XVIII to the throne of France in May. The tsar was then free to leave Paris and make a celebratory visit to England. Wylie was included within the Tsar's extensive retinue, and on 10 June at the Ascot races he was knighted at Alexander's request by the Prince Regent, becoming Sir James Wylie, a Knight of the United Kingdom. No one at this impromptu ceremony had a sword needed for the traditional accolade except for General Platov who offered his. This handsome scimitar of the ataman of the tsar's Cossack forces, its handle and sheath decorated with jewels was then presented to Wylie by Platov as a keepsake, and it is these days displayed within the Kremlin Armoury.
During a visit on the Royal Navy's warship Impregnable a few days after Wylie had received his knighthood, Tsar Alexander mentioned to the Prince Regent that he had made his own physician a baronet, upon which the regent said, âÂÂWell, I will make yours one;â and then asked Wylie to consider himself a baronet as a patent was to be immediately ordered. The tsar, who was at that time designing a coat of arms for Wylie, requested of the Prince Regent if those arms could be permitted to include supporters, and although baronets, as such, are not entitled to have supporters on their arms, this request was granted in appreciation of Wylie's services.
Tsar Alexander had intended to then travel within Britain as far north as Edinburgh, returning directly to Saint Petersburg from Edinburgh's adjacent port Leith. This would have enabled Wylie to visit his home town, but the tsar was forced change his plans and the chance was lost. They instead travelled from London back to Paris, and the patent creating Wylie a baronet in the name and on behalf of the Prince Regent and with permission for Wylie to have supporters on his coat of arms specifically mentioned therein, was duly delivered to Wylie there in July 2014.
In designing Wylie's coat of arms, the tsar took account of an incident where, in dressing a soldier's wound on the field of battle, Wylie had pricked his own finger, which led eventually to its amputation. The tsar suggested to Wylie âÂÂtherefore, you must have two of the guards to support you; a Cossack for your crest, that he may defend you, and an eagle introduced in your shield, that if the other two cannot protect you, it may fly away with you, and bear you clear of all your enemiesâÂÂ.
The coat of arms is indicative of the bearer's great love of Russia. Above the shield, a Don Cossack holding a lance gallops at full speed to the right. Below that, the upper torso of a knight wearing an open-faced helmet signifies the bearer as being a baronet or knight. At the top of the shield is the double-headed Russian eagle, this also being the badge of the Imperial Russian army. Below that, is a blood stained glove and the fox that is typically present on Wylie coats of arms, finishing with two five-pointed stars further down. Below the shield, Wylie's motto, is written in Latin as 'Labore et Scientia', or 'By Work and Knowledge', this described incisively by Vasiliev as "a motto that accurately conveys the character and activities of the bearer". The supporters, Life Guards of the Semenovsky Regiment stand at attention, one on each side of the shield.
Because Wylie had never relinquished his allegiance as a British subject, he had never become the subject of any of the tsars he had worked so closely with and this fact should have barred him from receiving any Russian title of nobility. Such was Tsar Alexander's regard for Wylie that in early 1816 he ordered that the diploma of nobility of the Russian Empire be made out to him and that his British coat of arms to be annexed to it. More was required to achieve this, and in February 1824 his title as a British baronet was recognized by the State Council of the Russian Empire, making him the only baronet in the country's history. A final approval then occurred in August 1847 when the ruling senate affirming the distinction of baronet for privy councillor Wylie, "with inclusion into part V of the Genealogical Books".
In 1814 Wylie was awarded Russia's Order of Saint Anna, 1<sup>st</sup> Class, this upgraded with diamonds in 1821. At around the same time he was also promoted in Imperial Russia's Table of Ranks to Actual State Councillor, equivalent in rank to army major-general.
Over more than eight months, from September 1814 to June 1815, Wylie attended Tsar Alexander at the Congress of Vienna, a tortuous series of high-level meetings between key envoys of the primary coalition partners and France to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order in the wake of Napoleon's downfall. With each party there having its own vested interests to maintain, their collective craving for inside knowledge on the positions to be taken by other parties led to a great deal of spy activity. Wylie himself became the target of intensive spying by the Austrian secret police, this mainly involving agents inserting themselves into congress social functions and reporting back on his conversations there. None of the reports extracted from the Secret Police files appears anything but bland.
Wylie attended the tsar at the nine-week Congress of Verona in late 1822 for discussions between leaders and foreign ministers of Russia, Austria, Prussia, France and England aimed at reaching mutual understanding in regard to the revolutionary situation in Spain, the recent outbreak of a Greek war of independence from the Ottoman Empire and the disputed Austrian rule in Northern Italy. Little was achieved there. The idealistic Alexander, hoping to build on earlier success in recruiting some of the parties at Vienna into his 'Holy Alliance' partnership for paternally guiding the affairs of Europe in accord with Christian ethics, left there disillusioned and depressed.
The disaster imposed upon Europe by Napoleon' actions had also caused the tsar to become a rather reactionary monarch, and he abandoned his earlier plans for Russia's transition to representative government and abolition of serfdom there.
A view into the strong relationship between Wylie and the tsar was manifest in August that year when Wylie was badly injured in a carriage rollover near the small town of Novomyrhorod, south of Kyiv. He was afterwards visited there by a nephew (another James Wylie at Saint Petersburg's imperial court, he the personal physician to Grand Prince Michael) and in a subsequent letter to his father in Scotland he recounted, as follows, what Sir James had told him about the tsar's care for him: "The attentions of H.I.M. to Sir James upon this occasion were such as can be forgotten neither by him nor me â they were really those of a brother to a brother. He remained in Novomirogod three days after the accident, gave every direction for the comfort and care of Sir James, repeatedly sat with him himself, and when obliged to continue his journey, there were by his order couriers sent off every day to him with reports 'till the danger had gone by".
In early 1824, Wylie's shrewd clinical judgement and boldness were never more obvious than when discolouration accompanied by severe pain appeared in the emperor's leg, this being a major recurrence of erysipelas that had occasionally come and gone since the tsar had injured the leg in his own carriage rollover while visiting the lands of his Don Cossacks in 1818. This time, the erysipelas appeared to have spread to the rest of his body, and signs of gangrene appeared. Advisers and other doctors within the imperial court were pressing for amputation of the leg, no doubt aware of possible murderous mob reaction to them in the streets if the tsar were to die without them having taken any prior action. The doctors were even provided with passports to facilitate their escape in that event. But despite the danger, Wylie remained resolute in advising against amputation. Slowly, the complaint yielded to cautery and the lancet, and the leg was saved.
Wylie was with the Tsar during his last tour to the South of Russia, which was ended by the tsar's death at Taganrog on 1 December 1825.
Five years later, when chatting with a visitor to Saint Petersburg all of his campaigns and the journeys with the former tsar,1830 Wylie said that he had travelled 210,000 versts [almost 140,000 miles] during that period â by carriage, on horseback, sledge or even on foot, as was dictated by the terrain and weather.
After a delay stemming from confusion about the legitimate heir to the crown and the resulting Decembrist revolt, the deceased tsar's brother, Nicholas, was finally crowned on 3 September 1826 as Tsar Nicholas I<sup>st</sup>.
Important elements of the new tsar's character were quite contrary to those of his predecessor. He was both an authoritarian and quite uninterested in Alexander's enlightened but abandoned plans to initiate Russia's transition to representative government and to abolish serfdom.
Despite the dissimilar characteristics of the new tsar, the Scottish doctor quickly forged a close relationship with him and continued to enjoy imperial confidence under him until his death exactly one year prior to the tsar's. He was one of the individuals honoured at the tsar's coronation by a notice from the emperor, being presented by him with a valuable snuff-box accompanied by a rescript, expressing his acknowledgement of Wylie's services as Chief of the Medical Staff.
In 1828 during the Russo-Turkish War, Wylie, by then aged 60, again saw service.
In April 1841, Wylie was promoted in Imperial Russia's Table of Ranks to Actual Privy Councillor, equivalent in rank to an army general-in-chief, this being the highest honour given to any Russian military doctor.
Except for matters related to his role as physician to Tsar Nicholas, little has been recorded of his medical activities after 1825. His innovative work was complete, his role becoming an administrator of the various institutions he had founded. He remained Medical Army Inspector for nearly 50 years and continued working in that capacity until his death.
When younger, the tall, well built, strong and invariably healthy Wylie was very active. He would enjoy vigorous sports such as gymnastics, swimming, fencing and ice skating, and, being an outstanding rider, he also passionately loved the hunt with his pointer dogs. He also liked playing billiards. And until his last days his physical and mental health remained sound, being characterised by excellent memory and lively interest in both current affairs and literature. His home was open to guests at any time and he remained always busy. Despite his elevated status and collaboration with Saint Petersburg's upper echelons, he always preferred his circle of Russian doctors, and for the last 15 years of his life a routine of regular informal lunches at his home or at theirs had been established at his suggestion. In Saint Petersburg or when travelling he would rather have dinner with a senior army doctor than with the city government or other notables. With the young, he listened without interrupting, was strict but fair, and helped where he could.
He died at Saint Petersburg on 2 March 1854, aged 85. From shortly after his arrival in Russia aged 21, 63 years had been spent within a whirlwind of historic European crises during which the performance of his multiple responsibilities was not found wanting.
He had still been reading and signing official papers on the day of his death. He was buried at Saint Petersburg's Volkovo Lutheran Cemetery, with full imperial honours, attended by Tsar Nicholas and all of the members of the court. Befittingly, he was spared the personal tragedy of his country of birth joining on 28 March the Ottoman Empire in its war against his beloved adopted country (this later known as the Crimean War).
He had been highly valued by all of the Russian emperors with whom he had closely worked â Paul I<sup>st</sup>, Alexander I<sup>st</sup> and Nicolas I<sup>st</sup> â and valued also by, inter alia, the famous Russian generals M.I. Kutuzov, P.M. Bagration, M.B. Barklay de Tolly and N.V. Repnin.
Wylie's parents are referred as of humble stock in some biographies, but they were able to give their 1<sup>st</sup> and 2<sup>nd</sup> sons, William and James, enough education to prepared them for teaching and medicine, although James subsequently had trouble scraping together the money to pay for the lectures he needed to attend at Edinburgh University. William set up a small school in Dundee where he was Master. Their 3<sup>rd</sup> son, George, followed his father's occupation, while their 4th and 5th sons, Robert and Walter, both became shipmasters and then ship owners.
Wylie remained on very good terms with his family in Scotland. His father died at Kincardine-on-Forth in 1807 without having again seen him after his departure for Russia. However, his widowed mother did later visit him in Saint Petersburg.
Walter owned a number of brigs, one named "Baronet". His journeys included Saint Petersburg, and almost annually the two brothers dined together there. On one occasion Sir James presented him to Tsar Alexander who invited him to dine with them that evening. He duly found himself having dinner on gold plate at the Imperial Palace with his brother, the tsar and three nobles. Although French was usually spoken at the royal table, this conversation was conducted in English out of consideration to the Scot's nationÃÂality, a courtesy that he never forgot. Wylie was also presented to the tsar on another occasion. In 1814 he was at Rotterdam when James and the tsar arrived there. James would routinely see Walter off with presents for his Scots relatives, and during James' stay in London in 1814 he gave ã500 to his five nieces, and other Wylie family members were likewise treated. Walter also received presents from his brother, including ã500, a gold and platinum cup and saucer, two diamond rings of great value, and a chronometer watch given to him at Rotterdam.
Walter's son William also visited Sir James when he travelled there as sailor boy, and received from Sir James a silver pen and penholder conjoined with a mathematical instrument.
Two sons of Sir James' eldest brother William went out from Dundee to him, and spent the remainder of their lives there.
One of these, another James Wylie (ïúþò ÃÂðÃÂøûÃÂõòøàÃÂøûûøõ 2-ù), arrived in Saint Peterburg in 1817 and from 1826 became principle physician to Grand Duke Michael, youngest brother of former tsar Alexnder, and was awarded the distinction of Actual State Councillor in Imperial Russia's Table of Ranks. With the Grand Duke on a visit to England in 1843, he was knighted at Windson Castle by Queen Victoria, becoming Saint Petersburg's second Sir James Wylie. He was married to Vera Rühl, daughter of court physician Ivan F. Rühl, a former colleague of Sir James Wylie Bart. His son Michael (ÃÂøàðøû ïúþòûõòøàÃÂøûÃÂõ) became a watercolourist, was awarded the title of Academician, and has paintings at museums in Saint Petersburg, Moscow and Rybinsk. These days he appears to be moderately known in Russia for his depictions of ancient Russian architectural monuments, many at Yaroslavl, but also at other locations within Russia and Europe. To their loss, he appears to be almost unknown elsewhere.
William's other son, George Wylie, became a prosperous Saint Petersburg merchant.
William's grandson, Richard Wylie was a Saint Petersburg merchant for many years, becoming one of the most respected British residents there before relocating to England.
Wylie remained a lifetime bachelor, although he had twice considered marriage. A marriage to an Englishwoman living in Saint Petersburg recommended to him in 1815 by Tsar Alexander I<sup>st</sup> did not eventuate as Wylie would not give up his high position and relocate to England, as was required by the bride. Then, in August 1823, during a courtship at the small town of Novomyrhorod, south of Kyiv, his wedding arrangements fell through after he was badly injured in the carriage rollover mentioned earlier in this narrative, his injuries confining him to bed for a prolonged period of time after surgery for a compound fracture of the knee and smashed fibula became dangerously gangrenous beneath their plaster cast.
He had become a very wealthy man before he died and had asked three Russian doctors, all close friends, to be executors of his Russian will (I.V. Enokhin, V.S. Sakharov and N.P. Yevfanov).. The will was challenged by his family in Scotland, and a legal battle was decided many years later at Britain's House of Lords where it was held that he had died intestate in relation to the current value on â¤50,000 invested in 1814 in British public funds, as naming a foreign power in one's will was illegal at that time. As he had no wife nor direct heirs, that money was subsequently shared among his wider family The money had been deposited with the intention of Wylie purchasing an estate in Scotland for his occasional use during his twilight years, and it had remained there after difficulty in finding a suitable estate and some change in his intentions.
[NB: Serfdom still existed across Russia when Wylie's will was written shortly before his death. An insight into Wylie's enlightened view on this practice is provided in his instructions for the sale of his properties which stated: "...also my property or estate situated ... in the districts of New Ladoga and Schlusselburgh, in different villages, with the peasants, (excepting those of my serfs who for their faithful and zealous service to my person shall be set free)".<sup>1]</sup> This enlightened view had also been demonstrated around 1806, when the tsar, hearing of a noble woman badly neglecting the sustenance and welfare of her serfs, had sent him to examine the situation and to accordingly. Following his inspection, Wylie sent for flour, wheat and wine to a great distance, causing her heavy expense said to have cured her of such cruel economy.]
Wylie's involvement in administration of army medicine began in 1804 upon Tsar Alexander appointing him Medical Inspector of the Imperial Guard, this likely to have been in response to concerns developing in Russia that year about the stability of Europe posed by Napoleon.
When war broke out the next year, the tsar placed Wylie on the field of battle at Wischau to direct all Russian field medical services there.
In March 1807, prior to the Battle of Friedland, the tsar appointed Wylie as Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health. Accordingly, Wylie was put in charge of the provision of the Russian army's medical services at Friedland.
Even prior to this appointment, the tsar had already put him in charge of organising a general hospital for field forces about 15 miles at Königsberg, nearby the conflict zones. During the Eylau battle,15 miles away, intended to accommodate wounded soldiers from the battle. The battle was extraordinarily bloody, with the hospital taking in 20,000 wounded, 17,000 of them Russians. The concept behind this hospital became the template for establishing Wylie's Temporary Military Hospitals<nowiki/>' to serve alongside, as circumstances permitted, the battlefield corps and divisional hospitals.
A key role of Wylie's 1807 appointment was for him to submit for the tsar's endorsement his recommendations for improving the provision of battlefield medical services. Wylie's work in this regard initially relied on his already fairly wide experience as an army doctor. As a regimental surgeon, Wylie had seen the inadequacy of the provision for care of the wounded, there being just one doctor, and without any auxiliaries, catering for about 1,600 men. The absence of any official instructions left each army doctor to act on his own initiative and in accord with his own comfort. First-aid posts were never set up, this generally leading to hundreds of wounded being abandoned on the field. It had been just the same at Eylau where the Russian army had suffered huge losses. Clearly, it was already apparent to Wylie that a complete reorganisation of the army's medical service was required.
Wylie's medical and managerial involvements with the army's medical service during these latter campaigns and his development of several organisational documents even in the difficult circumstances of battle, together with his work on the battlefields had also attracted the attention of Russia's allies Austria and Prussia who then applied Wylie's successful methods in their own armies medical corps, Wylie being requested by the Prussian government to travel there to advise them accordingly.
Wylie's battlefield work to that point in time was to be instrumental in his appointment, via an edict of June 1808, as Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health, this within the Ministry of War.
The term '<nowiki/>Military Hospital<nowiki/>' pertained to both the large military hospitals permanently in place in major cities such as Saint Petersburg and to '<nowiki/>Mobile Hospitals<nowiki/>', the small battalion, division and corps military hospitals established at a battle site, but not to the newer Temporary Military Hospitals<nowiki/>' which were large hospital set up in the vicinity of expected battles.
With his appointment as Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health, Wylie set about improving the state of military hospitals which, according to his grandniece, were in a deplorable state at the time he had arrived in Russia. He found it difficult to convince people of the importance of light and ventilation and so he demonstrated this by placing plants in strategic positions, pointing out that those which died had faced north with little light. Hospitals started to be rebuilt according to his views and in l8l9 the military hospital in St Petersburg was described as follows: "The Military Hospital is a splendid establishment. It does the highest honour to the empire ...The cost per patient is little more than half of Civil Hospitals".
Around 1812 Wylie published the Delivery and Mobile Hospitals Regulations<nowiki/>', this intended to set uniform standards for treating sick or wounded soldiers within the corps and divisional hospitals.
This document was followed in 1816 by '<nowiki/>Corps and Divisional Hospitals and Regiment Infirmaries Regulations<nowiki/>'. Included therein was a delineation of the different classes of these hospitals together with their individual requirement for staffing and facilities. With the Mobile Hospital staffing in mind, Paramedic Colleges<nowiki/>' were to be established within existing hospitals.
In parallel with improving the state of military hospitals, Wylie also managed both the redrafting of existing regulations about them and the creation of others. In 1808 he oversaw redrafting of the existing Hospitals General Regulations<nowiki/>'.
The term Temporary Military Hospital' pertained to a large temporary army hospital set up, if circumstances permitted, at a populated location in the vicinity of expected battles. It would work in tandem with the army's battlefield corps and divisional hospitals.
In 1812 Wylie published the Temporary Military Hospitals Regulations<nowiki/>' covering, inter alia, their numbers and capacities.
In 1819, instructions written in 1808 pertaining to all types of military hospital was rewritten as Military Medical Property Catalogues<nowiki/>'.
The tsar had received early warning to indicate that Napoleon was planning to invade Russia during summertime in 1812 and accordingly had instructed this Ministry for War to urgently prepare for this.
Wylie's overlapping roles as Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health (from 1807) and Director Army Medical Department (1812) permitted him the time to prepare Russia's military medicine for a suspected invasion of Russia during summer 1812. In late 1811, his task was quantified to one of providing medical services for an army of 300,000, including no less than 500 doctors. Wylie was to oversee a total reorganisation of the army's medical supplies and the bringing of its medical services to a high state of efficiency, especially in regard to ensuring sufficiency in trained field surgeons and medics; medical instruments and medications; materials for the assembly of battlefield hospitals; ancillary army staff, carts and horses needed to transfer wounded soldiers to battle-site hospitals or further afield; and much more.
The Russian army had those 500 doctors, most of them being graduates of Wylie's Imperial Military-Medical Academy, in place by the time Napoleon's forces crossed the border into Russia. Overall, about 700 doctors would serve in the army by the time the invaders had perished or returned across the border. [NB: As was also the case in Imperial Russia's later military conflicts, the recruitment of military doctors was accelerated by graduating ahead academy students ahead of schedule and through active recruiting doctors from private practice.]
Wylie had also arranged three backup field pharmacies, each having six month's supply for 100,000 men, and three mobile divisions that would follow armies. Because Napoleon's point of invasion was to remain uncertain to the tsar's Minister of War Barclay de Tolly until the day it occurred, his plan was to locate the army facing the invasion as separate detachments located from Latvia southwards into Russian Ukraine. Wylie accordingly located his backup field pharmacies at Pskov, Smolensk and Kiev.
Additionally, Wylie arranged for corps-level pharmacies that would each supply temporary field hospitals and regimental pharmacies with six month's supply. Sufficient lint and bandages were readied to cater for every fifth soldier, and regimental quartermasters were required to prepare linen bandages and compresses plus half a pound of lint for initial dressings to cover every sixth soldier.
Another noteworthy outcome of Wylie's appointment as director of the Medical Department, also was that in every possible way he supported and advanced Russian doctors, and for this he obtained their appreciation and respect. Later, once he could see that it had become possible for Russia to effectively train its own sons, he discontinued all recruitment of foreign doctors and surgeons into Russia's armed forces.
Wylie went on to personally direct the Russian army's medical services in the major battles held within Russia at Vitebsk, Smolensk, Borodino, Tarutino, Maloyaroslavets, Vyasma and Krasnoi, and after hostilities resumed in early 1813, also in the major battles at Lützen, Bautzen, Dresden, Kulm, Leipzig, Brienne, Bar-sur-Aube, Arcis-sur-Aub<nowiki/>e, and Paris.
Years later (in November 1819), a state manifesto noted these comments that Wylie had included the in one of his reports about the 1812-1814 conflict: " ...military doctors shared labour and dangers with the military on battlefields and showed a good example of diligence and skill in the performance of their duties and won a fair gratitude of compatriots and respect from all our allies".
The outcome of the pre-war efforts of the Medical Department of the Imperial Ministry of War was impressive. Russian military doctors had worked throughout this campaign as part of a coherent system to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield for recuperation or for surgery at field hospitals. This complex mechanism was set up by Wylie.
With the conclusion of the 1812-1814 conflict, Wylie was able to focus attention on developing further regulations. These dealt with peacetime hospitals and infirmaries, military doctors employed within the army corps staff, and the recruitment, ranking and promotion of military doctors. An 1836 issue of The British and Foreign Medical Review stated re. Wylie's contribution to the Russian army: "The common soldier has to thank Sir James Wylie for such care and protection as his predecessor in arms demanded in vain, and the army in general has to thank him for a real and effective, instead of an inefficient and nominal, medical staff."
Saint Petersburg's Medical-Surgical Academy was created in 1798 from four existing training centres for army and fleet physicians. It is unlikely to be coincidental that following Wylie's appointment on 20 June 1799 as to Tsar Paul1<sup>st</sup>, it would be just 10 months before the tsar issued a decree concerning new accommodation for the academy. This was to be relocated much nearer the Winter Palace, 270,000 roubles being approved for construction. Afterwards, the tsar was at pains to be provided with options for the building's organisational layout and interior arrangements, requiring that it accommodate students and setting a deadline for the commencement of lessons there.
The main academy building was duly ready in September 1800, a large, eye-catching structure in neoclassical-style. Later, Giuseppe Bernasconi (known also for his work on the Winter Palace and elsewhere in Saint Petersburg), painted interior panels there and decorated the main rooms, particularly in the large conference hall.
After Wylie had been appointed Body Surgeon and Physician to Tsar Alexander 1<sup>st</sup> in 1801, despite this lofty role, he nevertheless showed a strong interest in also teaching students at the academy. After obtaining permission from the academy's Council, he taught there on anatomy and instructed students in how to perform operations, using both cadavers and living patients. According to Chistovich, "there was seldom a day when Wylie did not visit the Central Hospital of the Land Corps and did not watch treatment of patients, especially surgical ones". From this work, Wylie quickly gained an appreciation of the effective and ineffective teaching regimes occurring there as well as a good appreciation of the academy's administration.
In 1808, the academy's then president Johann Peter Frank produced a redrafted set of its regulations. Wylie, having democratic views about the distribution of power and authority within the organisation, suggested that new academy regulations be arranged by the body's professors and assistant professors. Their set of regulations, quite different to Frank's, was confirmed in due course on 28 July 1808. Just days later (31 July), likely at the request of the tsar, Wylie was elected to replace Frank as president of the academy (renamed that year as Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy) He was simultaneously also elected president of a sister annex in Moscow. He was to hold positions both until 1838.
At the same time, the tsar directed that members of the Academy be accorded the rights, liabilities, and benefits of a member of the Academy of Sciences.
The new regulations provided for democratic self-administration of the academy via periodic conferences of an academic council chaired by the president. Students on state allowance were increased to 720, young males from any background could enter if having sufficient general training to enable them to complete the academic course, and if he was a serf, he would be granted his freedom after graduation and 6 years of service in the military. The regulations also covered public awards for successful students. The implementation of these regulations was to prove an important factor in improving the training of military doctors, veterinarians and pharmacists.
Some 27 years afterwards, Wylie involved himself directly in the drafting a new set of regulations for the academy, this published in 1835. The document clarified the legal status of the academy's staff and students and the academy's future roles.
In September 1811, with the aim of the academy becoming the centre of medical science in Russia, Wylie launched its journal, the Global Journal of Medical Science. To get things started, each of the academy's professors was asked to prepare a detailed account of the current state of his subject, including the prior history of this becoming realised. Six issues of the journal were issued during its first year, then issues fell away in stages due to lack of subscribers. In January 1823, the journal was replaced by Voenno-Meditsinskii Zhurnal (Journal of Military Medicine), this becoming one of Russia's most significant journals, and nowadays Russia's oldest peer-reviewed scientific journal. It is these days publish monthly, since 1992 by the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. Responsibility for the journal remains with the academy president, and it has become the official voice of both the academy and Russian military medical services.
Upon election as president of the academy, Wylie had been determined to make it a centre for fostering medical sciences and for raising the level of Russian medical education to equivalent that of advanced European countries.
He firstly wanted an academy that not only provided academic teaching of medical theory, but also had on-site clinics for the students to practise their application of this. Separate clinics were established for each of surgical, eye and therapeutic treatments, each having the applicable operational zones and cabinets. In order for the academy administration to cater administratively with these clinics, he increased its 7 departments to 12. Then, with his intense interest in pharmaceuticals, he proposed that some botanic gardens be established there. The academy also taught veterinary science and maintained an anatomy museum.
Over the course of his presidency of the academy, there was a doubling of its departments and a significant increase in its funding.
From his first involvement with the academy, Wylie had soon become aware that apart from definitive essays in surgery and anatomy, the teaching of other subjects relied on either out of date translated manuals or hand-written notes. Commonly, a Russian translation of these manuals had never been done, in which case many of the teachers would simply read directly the Latin or German languages within them.
He was determined that the academy students be taught entirely in Russian, where possible via up-to-date teaching resources written in Russian. In 1822 he ordered the academic council to immediately commence translation of foreign manuals or, instead, prepare the academy's own manuals to cater for those subjects for which suitable foreign manuals did not exist.
These significant improvements in the academy's theoretical and clinical instruction enabled its students to with degree of Physician, giving them the right to practise medicine throughout Russia in either a military or private capacity.
Aware of the great benefits to academy students from a thorough grounding in medical geography and medical statistics, Wylie suggested that, for each of the major pathogens, the applicable academy departments routinely collect information on its prevalence and characteristics within each of Russia's distinct geographic and ethnographic regions. The academy received significant funding for research papers in this area.
Via numerous petitions, in 1843 Wylie, along with valuable contributions from within the academy, it's doctors received a sizeable salary increase, this to be periodically increased by 25% for every 5 years of service, and he also strived to obtain improvements in the living conditions of the academy's students
He would later donate 100,000 roubles to the academy to pay for scholarships directed towards its best students traveling abroad for training.
Between 1805 and 1808, he published four books at Saint Petersburg, this work on these facilitated by the year-long break between the hostilities within Austria and those within Poland. These were:
Much later, with wartime distractions behind him, he published a further 5 books at Saint Petersburg: These were:
Concerning American Yellow Fever was a small book dedicated to Tsar Alexander, written in Russian and primarily directed at military physicians. It stemmed from a request from the tsar to Wylie in 1805 asking him to prepare instruction for the prevention and cure of this disease in Russian soldiers stationed on the Greek islands who were badly exposed to it there.. It gives a history of the disease plus a comprehensive account of its characteristics and symptoms, ways to prevent and treat it. It also notes where these characteristics, treatments and preventions differ to those of other diseases.
A Brief Manual of Most Important Surgical Operations. This 100-page field surgery manual was the first published in Russia. The number printed included sufficient for a copy to be provided free-of-charge to every Russian military doctor, and "More than one generation of Russian military surgeons followed it and was raised on it". The manual included descriptions of the main surgeries conducted at military hospitals and listed the surgical instruments and associated items needing to be included within individual kit types to be supplied at the corps, battalion and headquarters levels.
A Manual for Physicians Performing Recruit Selection gives recommendations for evaluating recruits' fitness for miliary service. It lists the diseases, the physical and psychiatric illnesses and the deformities that can render recruits unfit for army service, and describes methods for their diagnosis. A separate section describes the detection of feigned diseases, especially relevant during annual conscription of 'recruits' into a mandatory 25-year term of army service. Heavy demand for the manual necessitated the printing of a 2<sup>nd</sup> edition in 1810.
His voluminous work in Latin: Pharmacopeia castrensis ruthena (Russian field pharmacopoeia) was intended primarily for use by military physicians and pharmacologists, but highly relevant beyond that sphere. Described by the Russian medical scholar Andrei Shabunin as: "a unique codification of the production, testing, storage and function of medicinal preparations", the 500-page work was so authoritative that it was reprinted in 1812, 1818 and 1840, each of these an expansion and improvement upon its forerunner, remaining the standard Russian pharmacopoeia until succeeded by a new Russian-language military pharmacopoeia in 1866.
Despite the award of some of Wylie's estate to his relatives in Scotland, he had nevertheless bequeathed a considerable fortune of 1.5 million roubles (about ã100,000) for construction of a hospital next to the Medical-Surgical Academy in Saint Petersburg. Built as a cluster of five three-story buildings, assembled in his honour into the shape of a W, it was opened in 1873. It provided 150 beds allocated as 40 each for surgical and medical services, 30 for gynaecological and obstetric services, and 20 each for ophthalmic services and diseases of children. Its design was found efficacious, especially for sound insulation.
Before the October Revolution of 1917 it was known as the Mikhailovskaya Baronet Wylie Clinical Hospital in recognition of Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich, youngest brother of the former tsar, Alexander I<sup>st</sup>. As of 2014, the hospital housed clinics of the Military Medical Academy: the Intermediate-level Therapy & Military Field Surgery clinics and the Clinic for Child Diseases.
On a wall within the administrative area of the hospital hangs a stunning painting Wylie in old age, sitting in a garden surrounded by smiling children. Nearby, a large, horizontal, half-moon sheet of painted glass that separates the top half of adjacent rooms shows a stylized head-and-shoulders image of Wylie in profile with a stylised image of the hospital's elegant frontage in the background. It is seen in mirror-image from the other side.
In late 1859 a large monument to him was placed in front of the Medical-Surgical Academy's main entrance. Funded in accordance with Wylie's will, it had been created under the collaboration of architect Andrei Stakenschneider, sculptor David Jensen and rock master G. A. Balushkin. A life-size, bronze sculpture rests upon a massive stepped pedestal formed from a monolith of black Finland granite. Wylie is depicted in his doctor military uniform bearing his medals while sitting on a cliff and reading his reformed statutes of the Academy, his pharmacopoeia laying at his feet. The corners of the pedestal feature four identical figures of Hygeia, Goddess of Health. The sides of the pedestal feature a panel with the dedicatory inscription carved in large gold lettering and three bronze panels showing: (a) his baronet's coat of arms designed for him by Tsar Alexander I, (b) a session of the council of the academy under his chairmanship, and (c) he and other doctors rendering aid to the injured on the battlefield. The monument was inaugurated in a solemn ceremony held within the great hall of the academy on 25 December 1859, this day being exactly 69 years since Wylie's entry into the Eletsky regiment. The ceremony was attended by ministers and leading personalities of the various departments of state, and speeches were made in praise of Wylie's work as president of the academy and about the military services rendered by him, these followed by Wylie's executors presenting the sum of 1,000 roubles from his estate to be divided among the poorer students of the academy
For 90 years the monument stood in its assigned place. Then in 1948 during Joseph Stalin's anti-cosmopolitan campaign with its dictum that foreign models were not to be unthinkingly emulated, the Imperial Military medical Academy* leadership was ordered to have the monument removed, perhaps even destroyed. [NB: The name Medical and Surgical Academy had been changed in In 1881 to Imperial Military Medical Academy and again in 1934 to ÃÂþõýýþ-üõôøÃÂøýÃÂúðàðúðôõüøàøüõýø á. ÃÂ. ÃÂøÃÂþòð (S.M.Kirov Military-Medical Academy) in honour of Sergei Kirov, First Secretary of Leningrad's city committee, assassinated earlier that year.]
This decision was backed up with a smear campaign involving pliable soviet medical historians who declared that Wylie had been an English spy. One of the historians even went to the extent of writing that Wylie was never able to learn to speak Russian, was haughty and tolerated no criticism, surrounded himself with incompetent foreign careerists, oversaw a run-down in military medicine, drove Russian doctors out of his hospitals and had fierce quarrels with renowned Russian surgeon N.I. Pirogov. All of this was being duly notified to readers of the local daily newspaper Leningradskaja Pravda (Leningrad Truth), a mouthpiece for the Soviet Union's communist party. Tellingly, this denunciation had occurred just two years after Russia's Military Medical Encyclopaedic Dictionary had described him as "A man of great gifts and talents, a good surgeon, talented administrator and organiser who enjoyed great authority in the country".
This led to a special conference being held at the Military Medical Museum in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg's name between 1924 and 1991) chaired by the lieutenant-general of the medical service. The majority of the conference participants rejected the charges against Wylie. Accordingly, in 1949, the monument was dismantled and for 14 years it's separate parts were hidden, buried within wooden boxes, until being re-assembled in 1964 and placed in the depths of the Academy's park. <small>[</small>
More drama ensued when two of the monument's bronze panels were stolen in 2002. Nothing was heard about them until August 2009 when news outlets reported on a badly damaged panel (that of Wylie chairing a session of the Academy's academic council) being recently purchased at a Saint Petersburg reception point for nonferrous metals, whereupon one of the purchasers, a metal artist himself, recognised its value and restored it personally before giving it to Saint Petersburg's State Museum of Urban Sculpture on 5 August 2009, after which it was returned home. The other panel (that of Wylie and other doctors rendering aid to injured soldiers on the battlefield), is also now in place, having either been found or reconstructed.
Wylie's well-preserved gravesite in Saint Petersburg's Volkovo Lutheran Cemetery features a massive black sarcophagus placed upon a podium of granite flagstones. Its rear face features a modern (2014) enamelled photograph of a portrait of Wylie. On a polished white marble plate attached to the front face of the sarcophagus the following inscription in four lines of English is carved: "Sir James Wylie Baronet 1766âÂÂ1854". The sides of the sarcophagus each feature a large panel with relief inscriptions in Russian about Wylie's life and his services to Russia, these translating as:
The surgical museum at the Military Medical Academy displays a bust of Wylie by sculptor, conservator, educator and artist Igor V. Krestovsky (1893âÂÂ1976), plus the original of a portrait of Wylie, copies of several other portraits of him, framed copies of documents pertaining to his duties, and many information panels about him. <small>[NB: The Academy had been gifted the original portrait of Wylie. It appears to have belonged in 1973 to a collateral descendent of Wylie in Scotland.</small><small>]</small>
An information panel is also fixed upon the front face of Wylie's former Saint Petersburg palace on English Embankment (the road being called by the French term Promenade des Anglais at the time he resided there). Its location opposite the Bolshaya Neva Rive<nowiki/>r, would have afforded him an attractive 20-minute walk along the riverbank to the Winter Palace and a further 30 minutes beyond there to his Military Medical Academy. The translated wording states: "18<sup>th</sup> century architectural monument. House of Y.V. Villie (N.A. Demidova. A.F. Ghausha) built in 1737-1739 and rebuilt in the late 1820s. Protected by the state."
"At a ceremony held in 2004 at High Street in Wylie's home town Kincardine-on-Forth, a plaque was unveiled to celebrate the memory of Wylie, one of the town's most distinguished sons. It states: "Sir James Wylie, Bart. Born Kincardine 1768 â A pioneering medical Scot â Honoured by Russia, Britain, France and Prussia â Founder of the Medico-Chirurgical Academy of St Petersburg where his generous bequest endowed a clinic â Died St Petersburg 1854. Labore et Scientia by Work and Knowledge â Erected by Kincardine Community Council."
Wylie is briefly mentioned as a minor character at Borodino in the Russian-language version and some English-language versions of Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, being named in the latter as Doctor Villier, the anglicised form of the Russian Villiye. However, some English-language versions exclude these pages entirely and others include them but with Wylie un-named.
Wylie's government roles, honours and memberships are well summarised in a dedication to him given in a mineralogical book published by Gotthelf Fischer at Moscow in 1816. The author spent most of his adult life in Russia, in 1837 becoming President of the Moscow branch of the Medical-Surgical Academy. This dedication reflects a general admiration of Wylie among men of science within that country.
In 1840, Wylie received a striking 64mm diameter gold medal for his 50 Years of service to Russian medicine together with a gorgeous silver vase made specially for him.
The obverse side of the medal has a bust of him together with his name and the titles of his principal roles stated in Russian around the rim. The reverse side has twelve lines of Latin, the translation stating: <small>"To the most distinguished gentleman under the auspices of the triumphant Emperor. Dedicated to the most outstanding gentleman in the field of Medicine in Russia exercising the healing art for fifty years. Respectfully the doctors of Russia congratulate him at St Petersburg 9-12-1840".</small>
The medal was presented to him by Grand Duke Michael at a jubilee held in his honour at Saint Petersburg in December 1840, translation of a French description of the event reading as: <small>"</small> ...details of the half-century jubilee of doctor James William Baron Wylie, doctor and privy councillor to the emperor, grand cross of several orders, etc. All of the most distinguished within Russia were associated with this festival. From the early morning a great number of people had gathered in Mr. Wylie's house; at ten o'clock, the members in charge of the provisions of the festival presented their congratulations to the honourable doctor and invited him to a banquet ⦠the heir grand-duke Alexander Nicolavitsch condescended to go in person to the illustrious old man to congratulate him. At a quarter hour past mid-day the banquet room began to fill with those who had been invited, among whom could be found the grand-duke Michael, the ambassador of England, Lord Klanricard, field-marshal prince de Varsovie, prince Volkonsky, minister for the court, the minister for war count Tchernicheff, the vice-chancellor of the empire count de Nesselrode, the minister of the interior, count Strogonoff, the minister for justice, count Panin, the director-general of communication, count Toll, the controller of the empire Chitrovo, the marshal of the nobility, the grand-equerry, prince Dolgorouki, Blondoff, president of the department of the laws of the council of the empire, the auditor-general, prince Schackousky, general of the general staff of the Russian armies, count de Kleinmichael. At half past four doctor Wylie appeared. The minister for war complimented him in the most flattering terms, and on behalf of the emperor presented him with the grand cross of the order of St. Vladimir, whose star and ribbon were placed on the doctor by grand-duke Michael. At the end of the meal, which was the most brilliant, they presented to Baron Wylie a silver vase of very great value and an immense gold medal, struck in his honour<small></small> Some copies of the medal were later minted in bronze. The order of Saint Vladimir received by him was his third, this one being of the 1st class.
<u>Russian Empire:</u>
<u>Austria</u>: Chevalier, Order of Leopold (Austria), 2<sup>nd</sup> class
<u>Bavaria</u>: Commander Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown
<u>France:</u> Chevalier Legion d'honneur (1814)
<u>Prussia</u>: Order of the Red Eagle, 2<sup>nd</sup> class
<u>United Kingdom</u>: Knighthood (10 June 1814), Baronetcy (2 July 1814), coat of arms designed by Alexander 1<sup>st</sup>
<u>United States</u>: An international member, of the American Philosophical Society
<u>Württemberg</u>: Commander, Order of the Crown (Württemberg) (1818)
On 20 December 1812, following the retreat of French forces from Russia, the army's commander-in-Chief Mikhail Kutuzov penned a letter to Tsar Alexander, and included within it was a statement about Wylie's battlefield performance during the war within Russia, viz:
Twenty seven years after the Battle of Borodino, almost to the day, ceremonies were held on the Borodino battlefield to inaugurate a monument built there to honour the Russian army's efforts during 1812. There, Tsar Nicholas in presenting a signed Imperial Rescript to Wylie, read aloud its words to the assembled dignitaries, this translated as follows:
In September 1850, during formal celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Medical-Chirurgical Academy, and attended by Wylie, Tsar Nicholas read aloud to the assembled dignitaries the contents of his signed Imperial Rescript fo Wylie, as follows:
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