M. Marco Igual
Neurosciences and History 2025;13(4):212-222
Article type: ORIGINAL
AUTHOR
M. Marco Igual
Neurology department. Hospital Universitari Parc Taulí, Sabadell, Spain.
ABSTRACT
Mikhail Kroll was one of the most outstanding Soviet Russian neurologists of the first third of the 20th century. Born to a Jewish family from Minsk, he was a disciple of Lazar Minor, who in turn had studied under Aleksei Kozhevnikov, the father of Russian neurology. He initially worked with Minor at the Higher Courses for Women in Moscow, and during the 1920s he was an outstanding figure as a promoter of university and neurology in Belarus. In 1923 and 1924, he was one of the physicians who treated the cerebral vascular disease of Vladimir Lenin. From 1932, already in Moscow, he led several neurological institutions and became chief physician at Kremlin Hospital. For many years, he kept a close relationship with German neurology and medical publishing houses. He was an experienced and versatile clinician and neurology professor. His interests turned to the study of aphasias, apraxias, and agnosias, the localisation of brain functions, infections of the nervous system, and chronaxie, among other topics. In 1929, he published the monograph Neuropathological syndromes in German; it was translated into Spanish in 1930, and later, in 1933, published in Russian. This work had a considerable impact on neurologists from the Soviet Union and abroad, including professionals from Spain and Latin America. Curiously, a second edition was printed in Spain in 1938, during the final years of the Spanish Civil War, with successive reprints from the 1940s-1950s until 1961. We analyse the possible reasons for its success in Francoist Spain.
KEYWORDS
Mikhail Kroll, Belarus, clinical neurology, training in Germany, Neuropathological syndromes, Spanish editions
Neurosciences and History 2025;13(4):212-222