The historical outline of Vilnius pathological anatomy in the first half of the 19th century.

The first post mortem examination was performed in Vilnius by a priest Stefan Bisio in 1770. At the end of the 18th century, Jakub Briotet, a surgeon and anatomist, founded a modest anatomical (surgery) study. In 1804, Jan Piotr Frank and his son Józef arrived to Vilnius and became professors of the University. Jan Piotr Frank took charge of the University Teaching Hospital and Józef of the Chair of Pathology. When, in 1805, Józef Frank took charge, after his father, of the University Hospital, he founded the first anatomopathological examination room there. The samples were obtained mainly from post mortem studies--autopsies. Most of the samples kept in spirit in the Frank's room were eaten by the starving French soldiers during the retreat of Napoleon's army. Getting dead bodies for the Universities was easy thanks to Tsar's decrees from the years 1793-1809 which ordered to open dead bodies and collect monsters. Moreover, a permission to transfer dead bodies from military hospitals to the University was issued in 1810. These decrees did not stop the cases of students digging out dead bodies from the graves, which still happened in 1810 and 1817. Józef Frank acknowledged great role of post mortem in medicine teaching. He wrote: an author describing a disease with lethal outcome, who does not mention pathological changes found through autopsy is backward. Beside Frank's study, there was still a study founded by Briotet at the Vilnius University, at the Chair of Anatomy. In 1808, Tsar Alexander I designed ruins of Spaska Orthodox Church for an anatomic theater. After seven year redecoration works, it was opened. Beside the theater, dissection room and Veterinary Institute, the building included zoological, veterinary and anatomical museum. The growing anatomical museum had, in 1841, 2895 preparations including 1239 anatomopathological preparations. After closing down Vilnius University and opening Medical and Surgery Academy, pathological anatomy classes were introduced for the 5th year students in 1834. The first lecturer of pathological anatomy, as an individual subject, was Ludwik Siewruk. He started the classes in 1840 when he took charge of the Chair of Anatomy at the Moscow University. Jan Leonow continued the classes till the closing down of Medical and Surgery Academy by the tsar in 1842. The classes performed by Siewruk and Leonow were limited to lectures. Practical knowledge, autopsies were a part of pathology classes and specific therapy (3rd and 4th years of studies). After the Academy had been closed down, all the exhibits of the Vilnius anatomical museum, including anatomopathological preparations were moved to the anatomical museum of Kiev University. Few of them remained in the Vilnius Medical Society.