With the notable exception of Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiology of the late nineteenth century is little-known to non-Russian speakers. This book presents Russian experimental physiologists and their research, situating them both within the historical and political context of post-Crimean Russia and within developments in European physiology. Kichigina concentrates on the decades from 1860 to the mid-1880s, a period of reform and liberalization in Russia, and on educational institutions, primarily the St Petersburg Medico-Surgical Academy, which trained physicians for the military. The volume is divided into three sections: one on the situation of physiological research in Russia and Europe, one on the rise of the Medico-Surgical Academy to become a leading site for experimental research in physiology, and one on the career of Ivan Sechenov after his resignation from the Academy.

The first section provides an intellectual and scientific background to the development of Russian experimental physiology. In the 1860s, Russia found itself in a brief phase of liberalization, with a strong interest in modernization. Recognizing that it lagged well behind Central and Western Europe in science, technology and medicine and that adequate facilities for acquiring scientific skills were lacking in the country, the Russian government encouraged scholars to study abroad for their training and education. With Germany the internationally leading site of physiological research in the second half of the nineteenth century, it is not surprising that Russian physiologists, chemists and medical students completed part, if not all, of their training in German and many also in French laboratories. The influence of German physiology, especially, with its emphasis on the physics and chemistry of organisms, quantification, measurement and the use of precision apparatus, was particularly prominent in the kinds of research Russian physiologists conducted, the laboratories they set up and the student training programmes they developed. Nonetheless, they were confronted with Russia's particular economic and political situation, including institutional politics and funding difficulties when they sought to establish laboratories and introduce lab courses and the newer physiology to the medical curriculum.

The second, strongest section of this book takes up this thread. It follows developments at a single, crucial, institution, the Medico-Surgical Academy of St Petersburg, and the biographies, research and educational impact of several professors who helped establish experimental physiological research as part of the Academy curriculum. As Kichigina points out, the Crimean War showed all involved parties the need for more comprehensive and thorough medical training and education. In Russia, as in other countries on the European continent, this led to the modernization of military teaching hospitals and the establishment of laboratories to provide students with practical training. This situation proved auspicious for the Academy, which provided military medical education. Between the activities of its reforming director and a supportive minister of the interior, the Academy took advantage of the general atmosphere of educational reform in Russia to recruit, not without occasional resistance, a cohort of scholars with solid training in German experimental physiological methods and interest in establishing laboratories and practical courses and reforming the medical curriculum.

This history of the Academy in the context of nineteenth-century Russian educational reform is followed by brief chapters on five Academy physiologists. Kichigina discusses in some technical detail the research achievements of these physiologists in addition to their efforts to establish teaching laboratories in their special fields and, occasionally, their political positions, personality quirks or noteworthy theoretical ideas. What is particularly striking in this array, however, is, first, the universal German training of these physiologists, and, second, the thick genealogical relationships among them, with key Academy positions passing from teacher to protégé. Despite differing political views, scientific and medical interests and physiological theories, these physiologists display a methodological continuity and a commitment to quantitative approaches to physiology.

The third section focuses on the career of one of these professors, Ivan Sechenov, after he resigned from the Academy. In the previous section, Sechenov emerged as one of the most fascinating of Russia's late nineteenth-century experimental physiologists. Under his direction, the St Petersburg physiology lab became one of the most important labs in Europe, and he initiated significant changes in student training. While his research and teaching interests remained limited to a narrow range of questions on physical physiology, he also published speculations on the material basis of mind. This, even more than his liberal political positions, turned him into a polarizing figure between reactionaries and radicals in the 1860s, brought him into contact with government censors and led, among other things, eventually to his resignation from the Academy professorship. Despite the many layers of this figure, however, Kichigina devotes most of this section to Sechenov's research activities after his departure from the Academy.

The Imperial Laboratory is solidly researched, makes extensive use of documentary material and provides a wealth of information, little of which will have been known to historians of science outside Russia. Some knowledge of late nineteenth-century Russian history would be helpful for a full appreciation of the context in which experimental physiology developed in Russia, but the author does provide sufficient information for a rough orientation. It takes a very traditional approach to its subject matter, with much descriptive material but few innovative insights or analyses, but considering the state of research in the field that would probably have been too much to ask. The volume presents a straightforward and thick history of Russian experimental physiology, which situates both Russia and the physiologists it discusses within the contexts of Russian history and European physiology.