VOVSI (Wowsy) Miron (Meer) Semyonovich (1897, Kraslavl, Dvinsk Uyezd, Vitebsk Governorate – 1960, Moscow), physician-therapist, academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (1948).
Miron Vovsi graduated from the Medical Faculty of Moscow University (1919); from 1919 to 1922 served as a doctor in the Red Army. From 1922, he worked in the Faculty Therapeutic Clinic of the 1st Moscow State University, and as a senior research fellow at the Medico-Biological Institute. In 1934, he became head of the therapeutic department at the S. P. Botkin Hospital, on the basis of which a department of therapy was established at the Central Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians, which he headed until 1938. From 1938 until the end of his life, he led the 2nd Department of Therapy at the same institute.
From 1941 to 1947, he was the Chief Therapist of the Red Army. In 1952, he was arrested and imprisoned in connection with the so-called “Doctors’ Plot”; in 1953, he was released and fully rehabilitated.
His principal scientific works were devoted to the physiology and pathology of the kidneys, lungs, heart, and liver, as well as to diseases of the circulatory system and others. He developed key principles of military field therapy. In 1934, he proposed serum therapy for pneumonia, and in 1956, he introduced a classification of angina pectoris and described clinical characteristics of transitional forms from angina to myocardial infarction. He devised original functional methods for investigating nephritis. His research also focused on the aetiology, pathogenesis, and treatment of acute diffuse glomerulonephritis, on metabolic disorders in wartime conditions, and on the specific course of internal diseases in wounded patients.
Honoured Scientist of the RSFSR (1943); Major-General of the Medical Service (1943).
Publications:
Нефриты и нефрозы, М., 1955 (совм. с Г.Ф.Благманом) (Nephritis and Nephroses, Moscow, 1955 (co-authored with G. F. Blagman));
Болезни системы мочеотделения, М., 1960 (Diseases of the Urinary System, Moscow, 1960;
Клинические лекции: (Болезни сердца и сосудов). М., 1961. (Clinical Lectures: (Heart and Vascular Diseases), Moscow, 1961).