Draft:Red Cross Hospital in Dnipro

The Red Cross Hospital in Dnipro is a ruined multidisciplinary medical institution built partly at the expense of the Red Cross organization, a historically promising medical research center.

Prerequisites for the establishment and the beginning of the history of the hospital
The quantitative relationship between doctors and the townspeople and peasants of Yekaterinoslavshchina was disastrous. For the city there were 8867 people per one doctor, and for the counties this value was 12679 per one doctor. At the same time, these indicators were low in comparison with other provinces. At the same time, attention should also be paid to such a factor as the number of hospital beds in cities. The latter indicator quite clearly characterized the state of medical care of the urban population. Thus, if in 1880, according to the author's calculations based on the reviews of Ekaterinoslav province and reference books ("Cities of Russia in 1904" and "Cities of Russia in 1910"), there were 210 townspeople per bed, then later this figure changed as follows: in 1887. - 172 persons; in 1897, 186 ocoo6; 1905 p. - 209 individuals; 1910 p. - 458 persons; in 1914 p. - 464 persons. These figures do not allow us to talk about a consistently satisfactory state of hospital organization in the province. It should also be remembered that the average annual cost of a hospital bed was determined at that time in the amount of 90 to 350 rubles. . A characteristic indicator of the provision of medical services to the population of Yekaterinoslav Province was the gradual expansion of the network of pharmacy institutions and departments in the cities of the region. Thus, in 1880 there were 6676 city residents per 1 pharmacy, in 1890. - 7803 people, in 1900. - 6926 persons, 1910. - 3654 people, 1914. - 3469 people. And the first to act against this tendency is the Red Cross Society, the local administration of which in 1908 was headed by Nikolay Urusov, and which in fact in Ekaterinoslav was born with his assistance and initiative. In general, it should be understood that among the organizations of the Russian Empire has always stood out the Russian Red Cross Society, which was constantly in the process of its own dynamic development. The growth of its structure was facilitated by strong funding from both the private sector of the economy and the state. No less important factors were the wars and the society's stay under the patronage of the Imperial House. The Ekaterinoslav branch of the Red Cross, which still attracts the close attention of many historians, was one of the regional representations of this organization. Already on September 25, 1908, Prince Urusov made a submission to the chairman of the provincial zemstvo, in which he reported that at its meeting of September 24, the Red Cross administration decided to begin construction of a children's hospital of the Red Cross in Ekaterinoslav and asked him to address the provincial zemstvo assembly with a petition to assign material aid to the administration for the implementation of this project. Undoubtedly, it was an apt idea, because, despite the scale of the then city and province, as well as the dynamics of their development, they had no alternative to it. The basis of zemstvo medicine at that time was the provincial zemstvo hospital. There is a general characteristic of the said project in this presentation. It was planned to build a hospital for internal diseases with contagious and surgical departments. The future of the institution was also emphasized separately: "in order to arrange a Froebel Institute and an orphanage for children with incurable diseases at the hospital".

The next development of the hospital, the best years
During the First World War, the Red Cross hospital was converted into the main military hospital with 200 beds. With the outbreak of war N.P. Urusov was appointed deputy chief commissioner of the Red Cross of the south-western front, and with the entry of Romania into the war, he became chief commissioner of the Red Cross of the Southern region, the scope of his activities was determined by the Romanian front and the Black Sea region. One of the outstanding moments connected with Urusov and the Red Cross Hospital was the story of how 12,000 Mennonites were mobilized in Yekaterinoslav who could not take up arms because of their religious beliefs. Urusov, however, volunteered to help them and got 2,000 of them out and involved them in the activities of the hospital. In his memoirs, Alexander Rudolfovich Trushnovich, a soldier of the First Serbian Volunteer Division of the Russian army, wrote about the Red Cross infirmary created by the Mennonites: "In Ekaterinoslav, in the Red Cross infirmary created by the Mennonite Germans, we had a very good time.... In the fall days of 1916, when the soldiers were healing their wounds in warm wards, and snow was falling outside the windows, the sisters passed by us in white shawls, stern as nuns, but soulful, devoted to their work. How many of them died at the front, in epidemics! Will Russia ever remember their exploits?" It will not. Another Yekaterinoslav resident, who was appointed Red Cross Commissioner for the Yekaterinoslav province (except for the city of Yekaterinoslav and uyezdovykh). Yekaterinoslav and counties: Bakhmut, Mariupol and Slavyanoserbsk) was G.G. Kharchenko. Urusov's deputy was also a Yekaterinoslav resident - chamberlain K.I. Karpov. In January 1915, the hospital on the basis of the Red Cross hospital was visited by Emperor Nicholas II, who arrived in Ekaterinoslav to find out whether the local metallurgical plants could help the front. The hospital staff selflessly helped the sick and wounded coming from the front. Many doctors at that time showed examples of self-sacrifice found senior doctor Anatoly Evgenyevich Vartminsky, who was at the front of the First World War, saving according to different data from 127 to 579 wounded. The first senior doctor of the hospital Nikolai Petrovich Motsakov Motsakov was not at the front, however, also showed heroism in those years: he stayed until the end with his little patients, saving them from diphtheria. Having contracted this infectious disease, he died as a soldier on combat duty. With the changes in February 1917, the state leadership in the empire, these changes affected the Red Cross as well. In March, 1917. M. P. Urusov was dismissed from the duties of the chief commissioner of the Red Cross, and already in the first decade of April, the main department of the Red Cross began work in a renewed composition. The chief commissioner to the armies of the southern front became Yekaterinoslav V.E. Brodsky, and his temporary deputy was another native of Yekaterinoslav - a doctor A.E. Vartminsky. The last known meeting of the local branch of the Red Cross under the leadership of M. P. Urusov took place in early June 1917. It reviewed the monetary report on the activities of the department, which was found to be satisfactory. Physician Wartminsky gave a report on the activities of the Red Cross Hospital and the local community from June 19, 1914 to January 1, 1917. On its basis, commendation was given to the staff of the community, hospital and pharmacy. Separately, the work of the branch pharmacy was considered, and its manager, D.Y. Yurasov, reported on it. He noted that for the last year the pharmacy brought 20,000 rubles of net profit, and the community received 24,000 rubles in the form of a 25 percent discount. Next on the agenda were heard reports on the construction activities of the branch, ladies' committee and own membership. And at the end of the meeting the new board of the local branch was elected. M. P. Urusov was unanimously re-elected as chairman of the board, and his wife was re-elected as trustee of the community of the Sisters of Charity. But in a few months N. P. Urusov was forced to flee to Kislovodsk from his own second arrest. For his own activities in the field of the Red Cross, N.P. Urusov in June 1916.. was awarded by Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna a badge of the 1st degree. His services were especially noted during the visit to the infirmaries in Ekaterinoslav by Tsar Nicholas II, which took place on January 30, 1915. In the following years both "brainchildren" of Urusov changed not only their status, but also their appearance. In 1918 the hospital was closed, but the Red Cross hospital worked until the early 20s - until it was reorganized into Rabmeda hospital number l. In 1919, the medical institution is transferred to state support. Three years earlier, the hospital became the base of a medical institute, and then a medical research center. A new building is being built and the number of beds is increased. In 1925, the House for the Blind was opened here to provide medical and social assistance to people with blindness and significant visual impairments. In 1932, the unfinished church at the hospital was converted into an educational institution, namely a welding technical school. In 1936 on the basis of the hospital the Regional Institute of Emergency Surgery was established. In 1934-1936 another floor was added to the main building facing Korolenko Street. During the Nazi occupation the hospital served as a German hospital. However, of its doctors who were not evacuated was self-organized a whole underground partisan network. In this way, many doctors and medical staff made heroic demonstrations, sometimes sacrificing themselves to help the victims.

Innovative Blood Transfusion Unit
The facts show that in the 1st Ilyich City Clinical Hospital (this was the name of the medical institution in the 20's) took up to master the method of blood transfusion in 1924, while in the following another hospital institution successfully managed to reproduce this manupulation only in 1926. World War I. Reformatting into a hospital. For many years afterwards, the Red Cross Hospital was characterized by a high level of blood transfusions in the whole city, providing in the 60s access not only to the much needed blood, but also to its components: erythrocyte mass and notum plasma. Since 1947 the blood transfusion station was transferred to the territory of the regional clinical hospital named after Mechnikov. In 1947, the blood transfusion station was transferred to the territory of the Mechnikov Regional Clinical Hospital, where it occupied two small wings adapted for blood collection. In 1947, the blood transfusion station was transferred to the territory of the Mechnikov Regional Clinical Hospital, where it occupied two small wings adapted for blood collection. In 1932 on the basis of this department was founded a branch of the Ukrainian Institute of Emergency Surgery and Blood Transfusion (scientific director Prof. Galperin Y.A.), which laid the foundation for the organization of blood donation and introduced blood transfusion into the practice of other medical institutions of the city. This department on February 15, 1936 in Dnepropetrovsk for the first time prepared canned blood. In this year 330 hemotransfusions were carried out in the region. At the beginning of World War II the branch of the Blood Transfusion Institute was evacuated to Tajikistan, where it continued active cooperation as a part of the Tajik Blood Transfusion Station until March 1944. On March 16, 1944 the station was renamed into the ninth mobile blood transfusion station, the director of which was Professor Barinshtein L.A. According to the order of the People's Commissariat of Health of the USSR, the ninth mobile blood transfusion station was sent to the city of Dnepropetrovsk, where it began to work on the basis of the hospital in question from April 19, 1944.. From 1944 until the surrender of the Third Reich, the ninth mobile blood transfusion station provided blood to the Ukrainian Front and medical institutions of Dnepropetrovsk. Donors of all groups were accepted. The interval between blood donations was 2 months. Work at the station was carried out in 2-3 shifts from 9:00 am to 21:00. Donors were given food coupons (fats, sugar, cereals). The expedition gave blood to medical institutions and prepared blood for frontline hospitals. There were no refrigerators. There were wooden boxes with double walls, where they put ice from the Dnieper, and in summer from the glacier, and in the inner cavity they put vials with blood. It was very difficult to regulate the temperature of blood storage. Since 1947 the blood transfusion station was transferred to the territory of the regional clinical hospital named after Mechnikov. In 1947, the blood transfusion station was transferred to the territory of the Mechnikov Regional Clinical Hospital, where it occupied two small wings adapted for blood collection.

Gradual stagnation
In the early 1950s, the cross-shaped building, which was originally planned as a church at the hospital, was occupied by the College of Culture. In the 1960s, the welding school, which had already acquired the name of E. O. O. Kovalev, was taken over by the school. О. Paton moved to K. Tsetkin Street, 2a. In the post-war years, part of the first floor of one of the hospital buildings was occupied by an oncologic (radiation) dispensary, where there were two wards: male and female with 25 beds each. Before that, this department was based in the Zemskaya Hospital (Mechnikov Hospital). Since May 1, 1950. Maria Aronovna Stravets became the chief physician, who organized intracavitary radiation treatment with radium mesotorium. The first radiologist was doctor Turovskaya M.A., who later died of acute leukemia because she hid the container with radium during transportation in an ordinary train car under a pillow so that it would not be accidentally stolen, because the shell consisted of gold, platinum, stainless steel. Protective devices, dosimetry would not come to the dispensary until the mid 50's. In the report for 1950 it was noted that "the oncological network of Dnepropetrovsk region consists of oncological dispensary for 50 beds, 15 staff and 10 superstaff oncology stations, oncological departments at major hospitals in Dnepropetrovsk and district centers of the region. Dnepropetrovsk and district centers with a total of 240 beds"; "due to the fact that there is only one dressing and manipulation room in the oncodispensary, we are forced to limit ourselves to minor surgery (removal of skin neoplasms, punctures, biopsies, impregnation with Gordeev's liquid, etc.).". After the war, the reformatted hospital differed only in some of its departments, which could perform a small number of highly specialized manipulations and surgical interventions. This is how, for example, the department of vascular surgery, which for the period from 1976 to 1986 treated 12 thousand patients, more than 7 thousand 300 people operated, more than 60 thousand patients received counseling. Considering the then indicators of other hospitals for the same period, it was quite small. However, the same vascular department of the Red Cross Hospital was the first in the city to introduce the latest techniques and even conducted clinical trials of some methods and means. Considering also the scientific potential of the hospital staff itself, it can be noted that in 1976-1986 alone, the hospital staff independently developed 28 successful ways of diagnosing and treating patients. One example is the device designed in 1986 by F.M. Zusmanovich, candidate of medical sciences, which allowed to inject oxygen in a certain way not directly into the blood, which at that time was extremely progressive, allowing the formation of new approaches to the treatment of diseases. Thanks to this very device, doctors developed a new method that gives a good effect in the treatment of vascular diseases. Completely new therapeutic disciplines were introduced. For example, before the creation of the vascular center, which was written above, none of the surgeons dared to perform plastic surgeries on arteries and deep veins. They required special knowledge, application of new equipment and great art of a doctor. After studying these diseases for several years surgeons in Dnepropetrovsk mastered complex plastic surgeries and by that time (1986) made them more than twenty. In addition, there was an active methodical work to share the accumulated knowledge with colleagues from other hospitals and cities. In the mid-90s the hospital buildings began to subside due to the nature of the soil and streetcar tracks laid near the hospital: the main building was literally cracking at the seams. It was recognized as an emergency building, which affected the fate of the entire complex, which since 1996 had the official status of an architectural monument of local importance.

The final destruction of the hospital
In 2008, the issue of complete reconstruction of the building of the Red Cross Hospital was raised by the authorities, but no significant actions were taken. After that, on February 19, 2019, active citizens of Dnipro, led by Nonna Anatolievna Timoshchenko, seeing by the decision of the District Judge what is likely to happen to the hospital, tried to stop the process of termination, pushing the idea of restoration of some buildings of the hospital complex for further reorganization into a museum of hospitals and military medicine of Dnipropetrovsk region, explaining the importance of such a decision with the frontline status of Dnipro, which at that time had been receiving the wounded in the walls of its hospitals for several years already For this purpose, a petition was launched, which, however, despite the public outcry, failed to gain the necessary 3,000 signatures for consideration. In 2012, a fire broke out on the second floor of the corner building of the hospital, destroying almost all the ceilings and leaving the building without a roof. By the time of the final demolition, only the facade of the building remained. This building was fenced off on the 4th and demolition began on March 6, 2019. In March 2017, the land plot with the full complex of the hospital was acquired by Limited Liability Company "Construction and Installation Company Dnipro". Since this is a historical area, restrictions were spelled out in the decision on the transfer. The land acquisition project was agreed with the Department of Culture, Nationalities and Religion of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration. This is where the dubious story of the beginning of the construction of the LCD "Geneva" begins. The customer of the construction had to agree the technical and economic indicators of the construction object taking into account the requirements of the current legislation of Ukraine in the field of cultural heritage protection. That is, to coordinate it with the Ministry of Culture. But this was not done. Instead, the legal entity-owner of the land plot filed a lawsuit in the Dnipropetrovsk District Court, with the regional state administration as the defendant. According to the decision of the judge of the Dnipropetrovsk District Court Roman Globutovsky on November 6, 2017, the lawsuit was approved because "the building does not meet the criteria of monuments" and accordingly the lawsuit was filed already in the city council. On February 21, 2019, the deputies of the City Council gave final permission to release the title of historical areal of the land at Korolenko, 22, removing all restrictions from the developer. According to another decision of this court dated December 17, 2018, "Building and Construction Company Dnipro" filed a lawsuit against the Architectural and Planning Department of Dnipro for allotment of the land plot at Korolenko Street, 22 for "construction of an apartment building, after which the plot together with the hospital was finally transferred to the personal ownership of BMT Dnipro LLC without any obligations related to the historical value of the buildings located on the plot for purchase. Thus, the owner of the land plot finally asserted his right to destroy the legendary Dnipro hospital and then to build an apartment building in its place. From 2013 to 2016, the central part of the former main building collapsed. On May 1, 2019, the corner building of the "Red Cross Hospital", which was located at 22 Korolenko Street, was demolished. The hospital church was also demolished at the end of the aspen. The last remnants of the entire hospital building complex were demolished on March 30, 2020. Originally, a new residential complex of 0.9 hectares and 309 apartments on the site of the hospital was scheduled to be commissioned in the third quarter of 2020, but even though work on the site continued unabated, even during the total lockdown; the approximate year of commissioning was then pushed back to 2021. As of 2018, at the end of its existence, the hospital complex had four twelve-story buildings; 9.7 thousand square meters of territory.