Romanovsky, Dmitry Leonidovich

From curriculum vitae ^[2] :

Healer Dmitry Leonidovich Romanovsky, St. Petersburg tradesman , Orthodox faith ,
born in 1861, in the Pskov province ; received secondary education at the 6th St. Petersburg gymnasium .
In 1880, he entered St. Petersburg University at the Natural Department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, where he completed two courses, and in 1882 he was accepted as a student of the then "preparatory" course of the Military Medical Academy , which he graduated with honors in 1886. On November 30, 1886 he was appointed junior resident of the Ivanogorod military hospital, and on December 31 of the same year he was transferred as a junior doctor to the Revelsky local infirmary, where he was until the end of September 1889, while in the therapeutic department. In September 1889, he was seconded to the St. Petersburg Nikolaev Military Hospital, where he was first at the clinical department of prof. M.I. Afanasyeva, and since May 1890 he has been in charge of the eye department of the hospital.

- The dissertation of the FDP “On the issue of parasitology and therapy of swamp fever ”, St. Petersburg. 1891, p. 118.

From 1908 until the end of his life, Dmitry Leonidovich was a professor at the Clinical Institute for Advanced Medical Studies in St. Petersburg . Died February 19, 1921 in Kislovodsk from angina pectoris

In his dissertation “On the Parasitology and Therapy of Swamp Fever” (1891), D. L. Romanovsky described the fine structure of malarial plasmodium , discovered in 1880 by the French scientist A. Laveran . Using a special set of dyes for microscopy ( eosin - methylene blue ) (a modification of the method of double staining of blood products, which was proposed in 1889 by the Russian doctor Ch. I. Khentsinsky ) ^{[3] [4]} , he showed that patients receiving quinine malarial plasmodia turned out to be damaged. The greatest effect was noted for asexual intracellular forms, the nuclei of which were rapidly destroyed. After 2 days, no parasites in the blood of patients could be detected. The results of these experiments allowed D.L. Romanovsky to argue that in the treatment of malaria, quinine is more harmful to the parasite than to the host. This conclusion was of great historical significance, since no one had previously supposed that a medicinal substance could act in this way. It was believed that medicinal substances simply enhance the body's defenses or serve as a source of additional energy. D.L. Romanovsky predicted that in the future specific active substances would be found to combat other diseases that could damage parasites to the maximum extent and cause minimal damage to host tissues. The predictions of D. L. Romanovsky were so inconsistent with the level of development of science of that time that they completely did not attract the attention of scientists. However, it was precisely this idea that P. Erlich revived by founding chemotherapy ^[5] .
It should be noted that if chemotherapy in its development today has already experienced a period of reckless optimism (just recall the problem of antibiotic resistance), then Romanovsky staining is still unconditionally relevant.

Romanovsky staining

The ICSH Dye and Coloring Expert Working Group, made up of the most prominent scientists, provides the following definition:
“ The effect of Romanovsky staining is that the blue cationic dye Azur B and the red-orange anionic dye eosin Y, when interacting with biological substrates, give more colors than just blue and red-orange. Red-purple (purple) - the most important color that characterizes the Romanovsky effect . "
Based on this definition, Romanovsky coloring, or, as they say, Romanovsky-type coloring, is a group of techniques in which the effect of the same name is manifested.

Despite a long history, “Romanovsky staining is now of outstanding importance for the morphological identification of hematopoietic and other types of cells. The understanding of the mechanisms of the Romanovsky effect continues, new variants of coloring methods are developed, in particular, which is very important, finally, attempts are made to introduce standardized techniques into practice ” ^{[4] [6]} .

• The article "On the structure of alien malaria" - 1890.
• The dissertation " On the issue of parasitology and therapy of swamp fever" - 1891.
• The article "Zur Frage der Parasitologie und Therapie der Malaria" (On the issue of parasitology and treatment of malaria) - 1891.

• Coloring according to Romanovsky - Giemsa
• The dye of Romanovsky - Wright
• Giemsa, Gustav
• Laveran, Charles
• Leishman, William Bug