by Acad. Yuri NATOCHIN In October 1904 the Royal Caroline Institute of Stockholm awarded a Nobel Prize to Ivan Petrovich Pavlov "in token of recognition of his works on the physiology of digestion whereby he has revolutionized and expanded knowledge in this field". Pavlov was one of the first scientists to merit this prize instituted in 1901 in keeping with Alfred Nobel's will of November 1895. Pages. 55 Ivan Pavlov wrote his first major work on digestion in his college days as a student of H. M. St. Petersburg University. In the autumn of 1873 Prof. Ilya Cion, a physiologist, offered a theme to two students, Ivan Pavlov and Mikhail Afanasyev, on pancreatic innervation. They did the job fine, for which they merited a University Gold Medal in 1876. On February 28, 1876, the two young men reported at a session of the Zoology Department of the St. Petersburg Society of Natural Scientists on their research findings. That day was a landmark date for Russia's physiologists: on Prof. Ivan Tarkhanov's initiative the Zoology Department of the St. Petersburg Society of Natural Scientists set up a Physiology Section. By 1917 it had upgraded its status to a Physiological Society in its own right, with Pavlov playing first fiddle in it. Pavlov continued his research in Germany, at the laboratory of Rudolf Heidenhein, an eminent physiologist and histologist of the day. The visiting Russian researcher studied the reflex inhibition of glandular functions, including those of the pancreas. Pavlov worked on developing a proper method for obtaining pancreatic juice - that is he sought to initiate the secretion process under conditions optimized to natural ones. Besides, he looked into the role of glandular innervation. In 1888 Pavlov proved that the secretory nerves of the pancreas pass within the vagus nerve. In the 1880s Pavlov concentrated on the nervous regulation of cardiac functions; he suggested a new method of researching into kidney functions by bringing part of the bl ... Читать далее