Fort Alexander I and the plague laboratory

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

It all began in 1897, when the danger of a plague epidemic and its constant outbreaks in southeastern Russia seriously worried the Russian government. A special operational body was created in charge of all anti-plague measures - "A special commission to prevent the introduction of a plague infection and to fight it if it appears in Russia" (KOMOCHUM).

Prince Alexander Petrovich of Oldenburg was appointed chairman. This statesman was the great-grandchildren of Paul I, a member of the imperial family and distinguished himself favorably from other Romanovs. The same considered the Oldenburgskys to be great originals, who preferred social activities to secular entertainment and spent time, effort and considerable funds on charity, the development of science and education.

The main merit of Alexander Petrovich was the organization of the Imperial Institute of Experimental Medicine (IIEM). Research at IIEM was carried out in accordance with the tasks assigned to it: studying the causes of diseases "mainly of an infectious nature" and solving practical issues of combating various infectious diseases - rabies, cholera, glanders, syphilis, anthrax, diphtheria and others.

It also became the main base of KOMOCHUM, and the work was coordinated by the Prince of Oldenburg. Under his leadership, the epidemiological situation in the countries most unfavorable for plague and cholera was constantly studied, and a plague laboratory was opened at IIEM, which was headed by Alexander Alexandrovich Vladimirov. It studied the biology of the plague microbe, developed methods and schemes for immunization. Special courses were also opened at the institute, where you could get detailed information about the plague and methods of fighting it.

The production of anti-plague serum began at the beginning of 1897, and its production - in 1898. A test tube with the culture of the plague pathogen was delivered from the Pasteur Institute to the IIEM by the head of the bacteriology department, Sergei Nikolaevich Vinogradsky, who famously carried it in his jacket pocket on the famous "Northern Express" Paris-Petersburg. About 100 horses were used to produce whey.

They were housed in the stables of the Oldenburgskys Summer Palace on Kamenny Island and were transported every day by boats across the Bolshaya Nevka. Horses were injected with the plague bacillus, after which antibodies were produced in their blood, and then serum was made. The amount of blood taken from the horse to obtain serum reached 5-6 liters.

Industrial buildings were two small wooden barracks located on the territory of the IIEM estate at 12 Lopukhinskaya Street. Wastewater from the institute, before entering the river, underwent special treatment: it was evaporated in boilers, and the remaining sediment was then cleaned off and burned.

The honor of inventing the first effective anti-plague serum in the history of mankind belongs to the student of Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov - Vladimir Aronovich Khavkin. He created it during the terrible plague in Bombay, where three thousand people died every day. One of Khavkin's assistants fell ill with a nervous breakdown, two escaped. However, the scientist managed to create a serum in record time - three months. He tested the safety of the vaccine on himself, simultaneously injecting a lethal dose of the plague pathogen and what would later be called "Khavkin's lymph."

It was not yet known how the plague was infected, security measures were taken at random, and considerable courage was required from the IIEM staff. Alexander Alexandrovich Vladimirov recalled in his memoirs: “To prevent infection through damaged skin, four of us, admitted directly to manipulating the live virus and with infected animals … stopped shaving and grew beards, not suspecting that we were in much more danger from fleas and our experimental rodents."

The KOMOCHUM office received information about all suspicious diseases not only in Russia, but also in other countries; an expedition was sent to the center of the epidemic, which localized the focus, set up several cordons of soldiers and carried out preventive and therapeutic measures. Thus, IIEM products were immediately tested in practice. And the effectiveness of the first anti-plague serum turned out to be high: the mortality rate among those infected with the bubonic form of plague decreased 15 times.

An expansion of production was required, but it was risky to establish a mass production of such dangerous products in the center of the empire's capital. The government decided to take all work on especially dangerous infections outside the city, and then, thanks to the efforts of the Prince of Oldenburg, it was possible to get a fort located in the water area of the Gulf of Finland near Kronstadt. This is how the “Special laboratory of IIEM for the procurement of anti-plague drugs at the“Emperor Alexander I”fort, or simply the Plague Fort, arose.

The citadel had completely collapsed by that time, but money was not spared for reconstruction, and the Special Laboratory was equipped with the latest technology. It had running water, electric lighting, steam heating, a horse lift, a cremation oven, a sewer, an engine room, a laundry room, a bathhouse, and even its own telegraph office.

All the premises of the fort were divided into two parts - infectious and non-infectious, which were communicated through boxes specially equipped for disinfection. The second floor housed rooms for doctors and ministers, two ceremonial rooms for receiving guests and holding conferences. The employees' leisure time was brightened up by billiards and a library. Each doctor had his own very modest room.

In the non-contagious department there was a whole menagerie of experimental animals, which were injected with a weakened culture of plague or other diseases: monkeys, rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, mice, marmots (Siberian tarbagans). Reindeer and several camels lived in specially adapted rooms. But the main place in the fort was given to horses, for which there was a small riding hall.

In addition to doctors, about 30 laboratory attendants, workshop workers, telegraph operators, grooms and guards permanently lived in the fort. In peacetime, the staff of the Special Laboratory consisted of a head with 3-4 employees and several seconded interns.

To communicate with the outside world, the scientist was served by a small steamer with the meaningful name "Microbe", which delivered everything he needed - food, drinking water and so on. The sacks were unloaded at the locked gates of the fort and only after the steamer had sailed were they brought inside. Security measures were observed extremely strictly. Special clothing was provided for doctors - rubberized shoes, trousers, caps and raincoats. Disinfection was carried out mainly with mercuric chloride, an extremely toxic substance made on the basis of mercury. At the slightest suspicion, quarantine was announced.

St. Petersburg and Kronstadt were completely safe, but this did not calm the fearful inhabitants. They treated the Special Laboratory with awe, and considered the wind blowing from the side of the fort infectious.

Fear gave rise to the most incredible fantasies and rumors. There were speculations about a secret bacteriological weapon being developed in the Special Laboratory, and mystical personalities found the fateful similarity of the fort on the plan with a bean and associated this with the name of the disease, which originated from the Arabic "jumma" - "bob". Then it was already close to conclusions about the secret spread of the plague and other sabotage …

Among the sane public, the Plague Fort, on the contrary, was popular, and they tried to get there on an excursion, where visitors were shown a museum in which preparations for bubonic plague were collected, individual organs of people affected by this disease, and stuffed animals that were carriers of the infection.

In order to get into the fort, it was necessary to obtain a special permit, and, judging by the "Journal of Fort Visitors", not only members of the Romanov family, scientists, military men and diplomats, but also students, "doctors", and other representatives of the intelligentsia visited the Special Laboratory and, of course, journalists. One of them, Ilya Eisen, published an article in which he described the Special Laboratory in great detail and with great feeling:

“We were very warmly greeted by the head of the Plague Fort V. Vyzhnikevich. We walked around all the premises of the laboratory, where the trainees made a special impression in their yellow translucent oilcloth dressing gowns, with the same cap on their heads and in huge galoshes-ships of the same color … It was terrible, to tell the truth, it was scary to look at plague-infected rats, rabbits and pigs … It was felt that you were walking about death … At the end of the round, Vyzhnikevich drew our attention to a gorgeous metal coffin and explained that it was in case someone dies from the plague."

The discipline in the Special Laboratory was very strict. Ministers sometimes "got lost", going AWOL or indulging in the "sin of drinking." In the summer, the fort was fenced off by the waters of the Gulf of Finland, but in winter they froze over, making it possible to walk across the ice to the city. Shoots were usually tracked. The archive preserved punishment orders - fines of three rubles (a large sum for those times) for absence and five rubles for drunkenness.

The special laboratory very soon became the second organization after the Pasteur Institute where plague research was carried out, and the largest center for the preparation of anti-plague drugs, among the buyers of which were Austria-Hungary, Brazil, Belgium, Portugal, Persia.

The scale of the work is evidenced by the data of the brief report on the activities of IIEM for the first 25 years of its existence. 1 103 139 vials of sera (streptococcal, staphylococcal, tetanus and scarlet fever) were manufactured and dispensed. Typhus vaccines were produced for 1,230,260 people. Including in the fort was prepared a preventive vaccine against plague 4 795 384 cubic meters. cm; antiplague serum 2 343 530 cubic meters cm; cholera vaccine 1999 097 cubic meters cm and anti-cholera serum 1 156 170 cubic meters. cm.

The work in the Special Laboratory was hard, tense, and doctors, saving human lives, forgot about their own. Having received laboratory contamination, two employees of the Plague Fort died - Vladislav Ivanovich Turchinovich-Vyzhnikevich and Manuil Fedorovich Schreiber.

When the First World War began, vaccines for the needs of the front began to be created in the Plague Fort - against typhus, dysentery, cholera. At the same time, they began to develop methods for purifying tetanus toxin for tetanus toxoid. Outbreaks of infectious diseases on the fronts were successfully overcome, and serum prevented the occurrence of tetanus in thousands of wounded.

Even before the start of the war, experts raised the issue of transferring the Special Laboratory to the Volga region, but the difficult economic and political situation in the country prolonged its activity until the beginning of autumn 1920, and then part of the equipment and museum exhibits were loaded onto a barge and sent to Saratov, where it was created. Institute "Microbe".

The plague fort began to be used to service mine-sweeping equipment, it turned into a warehouse, and then was abandoned and ruined. A small expedition undertaken by the staff of the IEM Museum in 2003 found the fort in complete desolation and traces of outright looting.

There were no gates, no windows, no doors; washbasins ripped out, electrical wires ripped out. Nothing remains of the beautiful iron casting. The Black Rangers also paid attention to Plague Fort. They found an ampoule with a plague vaccine, and as a result of a long, almost detective story, it took its rightful place in the window of the museum of the Institute of Experimental Medicine.