Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov (Russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Пирого́в; — ) was a Russian scientist, medical doctor, pedagogue, public figure, and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1847), one of the most widely recognized Russian physicians. Considered to be the founder of field surgery, he was the first surgeon to use anaesthesia in a field operation (1847) and one of the first surgeons in Europe to use ether as an anaesthetic. He is credited with invention of various kinds of surgical operations and developing his own technique of using plaster casts to treat fractured bones. Biography Childhood and training Nikolay Pirogov was born in Moscow, the 13th of 14 children of Ivan Ivanovich Pirogov (born around 1772), a major in the commissary service and a treasurer at the Moscow Food Depot whose own father came from peasants and served as a soldier in Peter the Great's army before retiring and opening a brewery in Moscow; Pirogov's mother Elizaveta Ivanovna Pirogova (nee Novikova) belonged to an old Moscow merchant family and was four years younger than her husband. He learned to read in several languages as a child. His father died in 1824, leaving his family destitute. Pirogov originally intended to become a civil servant, but the family doctor Yefrem Mukhin who was a professor of anatomy and physiology at the Imperial Moscow University persuaded the authorities to accept a 14-old Pirogov as a student. In 1828 he finished the Faculty of Medicine and entered the Imperial University of Dorpat where he studied under Professor Moyer (who had himself studied under Antonio Scarpa) and received a doctorate on ligation of the ventral aorta in 1832. During his doctoral studies, he participated in the elimination of the cholera epidemic, saw many deaths from it, on the basis of this he made many sketches of posthumous changes in the muscles of those who died from cholera, which he subsequently combined in the corresponding atlas. In May 1833, he travelled to Berlin, meeting such surgeons as Karl Ferdinand von Graefe, Johann Nepomuk Rust and Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach at the University of Berlin. Professor Bernhard von Langenbeck taught Pirogov how to properly use the scalpel. Pirogov also visited the University of Göttingen and on his return served as a professor at the University of Dorpat (1836—1840). Years as doctor and field surgeon In October 1840, Pirogov took up an appointment as professor of surgery at