Vellansky, Danilo Mikhailovich

Wellansky, the son of a tanner, nicknamed Kavunnik, was born in Borzna, Chernihiv province. Entering the Kiev Theological Academy , Vellansky changed the nickname Kavunnik to the surname Vellansky (vaillant). As the best pupil of the Theological Academy, he was sent to Petersburg for a business trip abroad; but due to circumstances beyond his control, he remained in St. Petersburg, and in 1796 he entered the Medical School, which was soon transformed into the Medical and Surgical Academy . In 1802, Vellansky was sent abroad for improvement in the natural and medical sciences .

In Germany , listening to Schelling and Steffens ' lectures at the same time as Oaken , he became interested in the ideas of the natural philosophy school and became a passionate advocate of studying it. He was the first to introduce the philosophical style of this school into Russian. Upon his return from abroad, Vellansky presented the Academy with a dissertation “De reformatione theoriae medicinae et physicae auspicio philosophiae naturalibus inuente”, but no one dared to object to the expert on Schelling’s teachings, despite the fact that a public debate had been scheduled three times in the conference. Thus, in 1807, Vellansky without a dispute was given the degree of Doctor of Medicine and Surgery.

Soon Vellansky received at the Academy the Department of Anatomy and Physiology, which he held until 1837. Many of his students admitted that teaching Wellansky (without experience) was too abstract and of little use for medical practitioners; others considered it even harmful, since it lured the listener into a field of hypotheses not supported by phenomena; on the other hand, everyone recognized that Wellansky knew deeply in his time the natural sciences and was able to arouse the desire to think systematically with his hot word in young people: “Science,” Wellansky used to say, “is not in a collection of information, observations, experiments, but in a conclusion from both general laws, etc. ”

One of Vellansky’s contemporaries, Dr. Heine, in Wellansky’s obituary, published in Medizinische Zeitung Russland's, 1847, calls Vellansky Russian Schelling and regrets that Vellansky was unjustly and little appreciated by Russian society for his work. Of his many translations and original works, “Animal Magnetism” according to Klug - from German, with the addition of a translator, as well as “Physics” (experimental, observant and speculative, 900 pages) were especially famous. Its main basics were read by Vellansky in 1831 in the form of public lectures that attracted a few listeners, only 25 people, but regular listeners who paid 100 rubles each.

Vellansky’s physics was rather original, at the same time as the Foundations of Physics on the Strengths of Moscow professor M. G. Pavlov , an unknown author, in a pamphlet entitled “Analysis of Physics of Vellansky and Other Newest Authors” (St. Petersburg, 1834). Pavlov, also a student of Schelling and Oken, paid special attention and respect to Wellansky and especially tried to attract Wellansky to take public courses in Moscow, about the basics of natural philosophy, providing him with a reward of 1,000 rubles. bills for lectures.

The last nine years of his life, Wellansky was blind, but, despite this deprivation, he did not cease to engage in literature. His wife (nee Ton) especially helped in Wellansky's literary work and wrote a lot under his dictation. One of the manuscripts, not missed by spiritual censorship, under the title "Animal Magnetism and Tellurism" is stored in the library of the Imperial Military Medical Academy. A tombstone on Bolshaya Okhta , near the church, was placed by subscription, with the highest permission, (interesting memories of Wellansky were written by N. Rozanov in the “Russian Herald” for 1867, vol. 72, pp. 99–137).

• Prolapse to medicine as a solid science, 1805
• Biological study of Nature in creative and createable quality, containing the basic outline of general physiology, 1812
• Review of the main contents of philosophical science, inscribed from the writings of Oaken, 1815
• Experimental, observational and speculative physics, 1831
• The main outline of general and private physiology, or physics of the organic world, 1836

• Vellansky, Daniil Mikhailovich // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.