Childhood and training Nikolay Pirogov was born in Moscow, the 13th of 14 children of Ivan Ivanovich Pirogov (born around 1772), a major in the commissary service and a treasurer at the
Moscow Food Depot whose own father came from peasants and served as a soldier in
Peter the Great's army before retiring and opening a brewery in Moscow; Pirogov's mother Elizaveta Ivanovna Pirogova (née Novikova) belonged to an old Moscow merchant family and was four years younger than her husband. He learned to read in several languages as a child. His father died in 1824, leaving his family destitute. Pirogov originally intended to become a civil servant, but the family doctor
Yefrem Mukhin who was a professor of anatomy and physiology at the
Imperial Moscow University persuaded the authorities to accept a 14-year-old Pirogov as a student. In 1828 he finished the Faculty of Medicine and entered the
Imperial University of Dorpat where he studied under Professor Moyer (who had himself studied under
Antonio Scarpa) and received a doctorate on ligation of the
ventral aorta in 1832. During his doctoral studies, he participated in the elimination of the cholera epidemic, saw many deaths from it, on the basis of this he made many sketches of posthumous changes in the muscles of those who died from cholera, which he subsequently combined in the corresponding atlas. In May 1833 he travelled to Berlin, meeting such surgeons as
Karl Ferdinand von Graefe,
Johann Nepomuk Rust and
Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach at the
University of Berlin. Professor
Bernhard von Langenbeck taught Pirogov how to properly use the
scalpel. Pirogov also visited the
University of Göttingen and on his return served as a professor at the University of Dorpat (1836–1840). in introducing
plaster casts for setting broken bones, and developed a new
osteoplastic method for
amputation of the foot, known as the "Pirogov amputation". He was also the first to use anesthesia in the field, particularly during the
siege of Sevastopol (1854–55), and he introduced in Russian army a system of
triage – sorting wounded soldiers into five categories. He encouraged female volunteers as an organised corps of nurses, the
Khrestovozdvizhenskaya (
ru) at the Saint Petersburg Charity Encyclopedia community of nurses established by
Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna in 1854.
Return and retirement , 1881 In 1856 after the end of war, he returned to Saint Petersburg and withdrew from the academy following the suggestion to work as a superintendent of schools of the Odessa Educational District which united several governorates. He also argued against early specialisation, and for the development of
secondary schools. In 1858 he received the rank of
Privy Councillor and was transferred to
Kiev as a superintendent of schools of the Kiev Educational District after disagreements with the
Odessa governor general. == Legacy ==