Medicine and Biology as Sociohumanitarian Sciences

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

## Document 8 of 10

be apparent and, consequently, accessible to all, both to those who are now well situated as well as those who are still powerless, but he [the physician] must remember that the key to recovery is in his hands. The forces of his spirit are in a potential state. Here we might refer to the experience of V. Dikul who literally worked miracles. Certainly, the imparting of a courageous attitude toward life and to the vicissitudes of life is a function of humanitarian science, for example philosophy, which must go hand in hand with medicine. It is a different matter that the philosophy needed by man should be oriented precisely at him, and consider the concrete difficulties, joys, hardships, ideas, sadness and hope. It should not be on impersonal schemes and distant social abstractions behind which man cannot be seen and which provide no rosy glow for anything, no comfort, hope or certainty and no real way to achieve any of these. For this reason, we, the physicians, as no one else understand the representatives of the humanities who speak about the moral or ``prophylactic'' essence of their work. On this level, the role of domestic philosophical culture—the Russian philosophy at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th–for the physicians are as important as for the researchers of the history of culture. The names of V.S. Solovyev, N.I. Berdyayev and others for us represent not only a distant cognitive but also practical professional interest. As for the study of motivation, ideas and images, this is a matter for the humanities, for the philosophers and sociologists. Here also there are great opportunities for interdisciplinary contacts as the physicians have enormous concrete material which requires professional sociological analysis. And now I am speaking responsibly as an official representative of the All-Union Scientific Surgery Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Here we perform diverse operations on vitally important organs including the intestines, liver, lungs and heart, including the transplanting of these organs and the reimplantation of extremities. We also observe persons in the ``distant'' period after the operation, considering here the most diverse factors. We monitor not only the function of the organ operated on, but also the quality and way of life as a whole of our patients. This, in my view, is what we are now talking about.

28. At present, we at the Center operate under conditions of cost accounting (here is the importance of the socioeconomic factor for you) and this has opened up great opportunities both for the physicians, for the patients, and both on a creative and applied-organizational level. It has become easier for us to establish contact as the physician has moved closer to man. For example, contracts are being concluded with various enterprises of not only Moscow but also the entire nation to study and treat both employees and their relatives. This brings enormous benefit to the health of specific individuals (and not to the abstract