The Moscow city government in the fight against epidemics (late XIX – early XX centuries)

Moscow, which in the post-reform period became the center of the largest commercial and industrial district and the main railway hub of the Russian Empire, was particularly vulnerable to epidemics. Since the second half of the XIX century, the solution of sanitary issues of urban life and the fight against epidemics were in the competence of the Moscow city government. The epidemic threat contributed to the rapid creation of a permanent organization under the Moscow city government, which included doctors of a sanitary profile. The city has developed a system for fighting the spread of infections, based on a card system for informing the sanitary doctor and investigating each case of the disease. Among the anti - epidemic measures, disinfection of premises, isolation of sick people and family members, and, if necessary, hospitalization were widely used. From expensive and ineffective sporadic actions caused directly by the epidemic, the sanitary organization of the city increasingly moved to broad measures of a preventive nature, which directed its development along the path of specialization, allowing it to cover the sanitary supervision of educational, commercial institutions, the work of urban communications-water supply and Sewerage, developed measures of specific prevention (against typhus, smallpox, etc.) and social support for the population. The high level of improvement of the city and extensive preventive measures, due to the large financial capacity of the Moscow city government, allowed in the early twentieth century. significantly reduce the incidence of infectious diseases and even prevent the widespread spread of cholera in 1908-1909.