 By Volodymyr
Senchenko
The title of my article is the first line of Taras Shevchenko's poem. Here is its full stanza:
Plague was walking with a spade
And digging graves,
And filling them with dead bodies
Never singing with saints.
The last line means no Christian rituals were observed at burials because often there were not enough priests to perform these rites. When I was a little boy, my friends and I could not even read but already knew about horrors of plague. Surrounded by a deep moat, a small cemetery lay on the highest field next to our village. Only one stone cross rose above the graves of those who died during the last plague epidemic in Ukraine. We knew the plague victims had been buried separately on dry fields with no underground waters capable of bringing the virus to nearby rivers. The moat around the cemetery was dug to prevent cattle or people from accidentally coming there. We, little shepherds, were not allowed to herd our cows near the cemetery. But we all failed to resist the temptation of visiting the place. Each of us saw that cross with an inscription from the Bible. We were all terribly afraid of seeing the buried disease resurrected, despite having no idea what plague was and how it could crawl out.
Our fears disappeared after the Second World War when we saw medicine could overcome any obstacle. Although the war was monstrous, making people subsisted in non-human conditions and there were no outbreaks of typhus, cholera or plague.
Nowadays, Ukrainians seem not to panic much about such widespread problems as tuberculosis (TB), AIDS, bird flu and sexually transmitted diseases. We are overly confident that we can combat all these infection threats. There are at least two explanations of our fearlessness.
First, we have much more experience and expertise in fighting the most dangerous infections. Many viruses were defeated in the Soviet period, and we are no longer preventively vaccinated. Other diseases, such as tuberculosis and sexually transmitted infections, were on the edge of disappearance. By the way, the reemergence of some dangerous infections makes civilized people wonder why there are still such viruses and also explains why there are quite a few supporters of the authoritarian Soviet system that was capable of rapidly and radically combating such diseases.
The second explanation of confidence is our deep faith in inexhaustible abilities of national science. The Ukrainian academician Danylo Zabolotny is among those who we thank for defeating plague and cholera in Eurasia.
Zabolotny came from the village of Chobotarka in Podillya. He was born into a family of grain-growers. After his father died, they moved to live with a relative in Rostov-on-Don. Danylo finished gymnasium and then entered Odessa University to study microbiology, which was always his passion. His professor was Illya Mechnikov, a Nobel Prize winner.
Mechnikov recommended his talented and well-bred student for the job of tutor for Nicholas II, heir to the Russian throne. (Incidentally, the Russian monarch loved spending his free time with a microscope.) Zablotny's proximity to the prince, who was only two years younger than his private instructor, did not help Danylo avoid arrest and imprisonment for taking part in a secret student meeting. Released due to poor health, he received a Master's degree and entered Kyiv State University to study medicine. He soon got married and went to Chobotarka to spend his honeymoon.
The famous professor Pidvysotsky helped him develop an anti-cholera vaccine. Danylo tested its efficiency on himself when cholera and diphtheria broke out in his native Podillya. He then had to develop an anti-diphtheria vaccine to stop the epidemic.
Later, Zabolotny traveled to India and Arabia to collect data for his research, which he carried out at the Louis Pasteur Institute in Paris. Then he went on to Mongolia, Manchuria and Ireland. In Paris, Zabolotny was decorated with the Legion of Honor for his contribution to the cause of eradicating disease.
He is also recognized worldwide as a defeater of plague, the most terrible disease of his time. Zabolotny nearly died of it when he accidentally scratched his hand with an infected syringe. He was the first to open departments of epidemiology, houses for sanitary education and laboratories in Odessa, Saint Petersburg, Kyiv and Kamyanets-Podilsky. He wrote hundreds of books and articles on microbiology. He was also the first rector of the Odessa Medical Academy. In 1928, Danylo Zabolotny was appointed the head of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Although he soon left the post, he established an academic research institute of microbiology and epidemiology, one of the leading institutions of the National Academy of Sciences.
Zabolotny also created a great school for microbiologists and epidemiologists and made a huge contribution to the development of these sciences.
Chobotarka natives said he loved his land, village and people. When I was a boy, my parents told me Zabolotny and his wife had been buried in the village, although they often lived and worked in big cities. I was also told he had adopted three orphans and supported thirteen children when his wife and son had passed away.
All these facts made Ukrainians admire Zabolotny as a prominent and charismatic personality. The Soviet regime disliked his popularity. When some of the KGB archives were published, Andriy Mistkivsky, Zabolotny's biographer, disclosed a plot to murder the "nationalist Zabolotny." Mistkivsky, who was looking for the scientist's diary, said: "If Zabolotny had lived till the tragic year of 1937, he would have been killed in some concentration camp."
His supposition is probably right. The government did not need such spiritual leaders of the nation. However, his lifestyle and behavior make Zabolotny a model for many Ukrainian scientists.
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