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William B. Whisenhunt, Elisa M. Becker. Medicine, Law, and the State in Imperial Russia., The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 2, April 2013, Pages 616–617, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.2.616
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Extract
Elisa M. Becker offers a new interpretation of the role of physicians and jurists in imperial Russia. She asserts that by the mid-nineteenth century medicine and law were working in tandem to establish causes of death for legal cases. Becker contends that the revolution in forensic medicine began with the Military Statute of 1716. The medical profession was therefore linked to the state throughout the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. The need to be able to determine a cause of death was not unique to the Russian legal system, as continental physicians and courts desired the same determinations. Yet, Becker asserts that the medical profession stayed closely aligned with the state throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which differs significantly from the conclusions of other scholars who claim that the free professions parted from the state from the mid-nineteenth century onward. She claims that medical and legal professionals during this era worked to reform the tsarist state rather than destroy it.
