Sir James Wylie, 1st Baronet

1. Early life: 1768-1790
2. Battlefield surgeon of Catherine the Great: 1790-1795
3. Doctor to Tsar Paul I: 1796-1801
4. Doctor to Tsar Alexander I: 1801-1825
   • Russia at war: October 1805 - March 1814
     1. War of the third coalition: October-December 1805
     2. War of the fourth coalition: December 1806 - June 1807
     3. Russia's treaty with Napoleon: June 1807 - December 1810
     4. Russia prepares for invasion: December 1810 - June 1812
     5. Napoleon's invasion and retreat: June-December 1812
     6. War of the sixth coalition: 1813-1814
   • With the tsar at Paris and London: March-July 1814
   • Attending the tsar at post-war negotiations: 1815-1822
   • Final years attending the tsar: 1823-1825
5. Doctor to Tsar Nicholas I: 1826-1854
6. Later life
7. Family
8. Achievements
   • He led the creation of Russian battlefield medicine
   • He propelled the delivery of Russian military medical training
9. Published works and essays
10. Memory
    • His statue
    • His hospital
    • The Military Medical Academy
    • His gravesite
    • Other
11. Awards and honours
12. Lengthy statements, letters, orations
13. Notes
14. Bibliography for the life and times of Sir James Wylie

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

James Wylie was born on 13 November 1768 at Kincardine-on-Forth, a Scottish seaport.^[3][4] His parents were Janet (née Meiklejohn) and William Wylie, he a carrier, Forth cargo transporter and farmer.^[3][5] James was the second of eight children, he and four brothers surviving infancy.^[3]

Wylie's parents have been referred to as being in poor circumstances.^[4] This is unlikely, as they were able to give their first and second sons, William and James, enough education to prepare them for teaching and medicine, but his father's occupations suggest that they would have scraped by, much like all local residents of that era other than those occupying Tulliallan Castle. And James is known to have had some difficulty scraping together the money to pay for each one of the lectures he needed to attend at Edinburgh University.

Inevitably, young James would have spent much time around Kincardine's busy harbour, well on its way to becoming one of Scotland's busiest by the turn of the century,^[6] and he would likely have listened to many stories about distant, exotic places from the sailors there.^[7] Nevertheless, after leaving school, James had an ambition to study medicine and he was therefore apprenticed to the local doctor, although this didn't start well as "being rather hardly used he ran off to sea" according to a grand-niece.^[7][8] Learning of this, his mother walked 20 miles to the small seaport of Cramond-on-Forth, retrieved James from a sloop lying at anchor there and escorted him the 20 miles back to Kincardine, after which James returned to his apprenticeship. He completed it, thereby gaining admittance to the University of Edinburgh.^[7] [NB: the sloop capsized overnight during a storm, with all on board drowned].^[4]

Wylie successfully completed his studies at the university between 1786 and 1789.^[9] These years coincided with a golden era of that medical school's history, during which it arguably provided Europe's best medical instruction.^[7] Wylie would likely have encountered the university's foremost clinical teachers of their day in Anatomy, in Clinical Medicine & Physiology and in Chemistry. This, together with his acquired knowledge of the medical school's teaching methods and his observations of the advanced structure and layout of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary^[7] were major influences on Wylie and were doubtless instrumental in his subsequent work to improve medical instruction in Russia, to create military medical services there, and to make a major contribution to Russian pharmacology.^[10]

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

Wylie left the university without graduating, not uncommon in those days, and in 1790, at the suggestion of John Rogerson, physician to Catherine the Great, he moved to Russia. To Russians, who found his name impossible to pronounce, he was known as Villie.^[11]

In accord with Russian requirements, he sat, and passed, the Russian State Medical Board examination for the right to practise medicine there, then worked for a time as medical attendant to the family of a Prince Galitzin.^[12] Soon afterwards, he enlisted in the Russian army, being appointed on 25 December 1790 as a surgeon-in-ordinary within the 33rd Eletsky regiment, stationed in Lithuania.^[13][14]

A brief summary of in-field involvements with the Russian army written by Wylie about three years prior to his death, fails to mention any participation in battles during this time.^[15] Notwithstanding this odd omission, he is widely known among military historians as a participant in the Polish–Russian War of 1792 and the extremely bloody 1794 Kościuszko Uprising culminating in the Battle of Praga.^[16][17] The award to him of a silver medal from empress Catherine would likely have been for service in those events.^[15]

Indeed, Wylie was well known for conducting many daring and successful surgical operations during these years. Together with some improvements that he had brought to the organisation of battlefield medical treatment, he had begun to attract enthusiasts. One of those was a Colonel Fenshaw^[9][18] who employed Wylie to tutor his son. It was over this period Wylie became fluent in Russian.^[18]

What particularly made Wylie's reputation was his treatment for malaria, known then as intermittent fever. Being quite common among both soldiers and officers,^[19] Wylie had been wrestling with it from his first days with the regiment.^[20] He devised his own medication for it, and this was recognised in January 1793 with a special award to him from the commanders of the regiment.^[20]

Over this period, he worked hard to educate himself via additional medical studies, a difficult task in a country having few medical books at that time.^[9]

One of his operations during this early military service involved successful extraction of an unusually-large stone that had formed within a soldier's bladder, for which Wylie received high praise from his Headquarters Physician.^[18] Wylie also successfully performed a particularly-rare operation to extract a bullet embedded in a soldier's lumbar vertebra.^[17]

In December 1794, Wylie finally received the degree of Doctor of Medicine, this from King's College, Aberdeen. In those days the degree of Doctor of Medicine was generally awarded at this university "in recognition of general and professional attainments".^[21]

A year afterwards (November 1795) he resigned from the army upon his appointment as family physician to Count Boris Stroganov at the Count's country house outside Saint Petersburg. He also commenced private practice nearby the Imperial Court, his reputation growing quickly among society clients as an unconventional, bold surgeon.^[22][23]

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

In November the following year, Catherine the Great died and the Russian crown passed to her son Paul under the title Tsar Paul I. Wylie's surgical skill, boldness and determination, plus the greatest good fortune, would soon land him important appointments at this tsar's imperial Court.

At some point after commencing private practice in Saint Petersburg, Wylie had reacquainted himself with Dr Rogerson, a physician to empress Catherine, who had earlier suggested to him a career in Russia and had continued in a medical capacity within the new Imperial Court of tsar Paul. Soon, this unremarkable gesture from Wylie would be the agent in utterly changing the course of his life.

Rogerson remembered Wylie when he and a German surgeon were in despair at their attempts in using a catheter to remove a stone from the urinary bladder of Baron Otto von Blom, the Danish ambassador to the Russian court and a friend of tsar Paul. Rogerson contacted Wylie who duly went to the Imperial Palace and successfully performed the lithotomy with a trocar deftly improvised out of the catheter. Soon afterwards he found himself appointed Court Surgeon (25 February 1798). Not only that: he was simultaneously appointed Court Councillor. Within Imperial Russia's formal Table of Ranks this title is of an equivalent ranking to that of an army captain, requiring him to be formally addressed as "Your Excellency".^[13][24][20]

Later, against the advice of older surgeons,^[23] he was the only one with enough courage to perform the first laryngotomy operation in Russia, it being previously unheard of there.^[8] In doing so, he saved the life of a man about to suffocate.^[9][12][13] This happened to be Pavel Kutaisov, the tsar's barber, closest confidant and fixer.^[22][24][25] The tsar quickly responded to this by appointing Wylie to be his Surgeon-in-Ordinary (June 1799),^[16] providing him rooms within the Imperial palace^[8] "to be kept near to the emperor",^[20] and in also appointing him Physician to the heir apparent, Grand Duke Alexander.

Kutaisov had earlier been ennobled as a count, and Wylie's work soon spawned the bon mot: "Wylie made his fortune by cutting a count's throat".^[26]

Wylie's position nevertheless remained very insecure, for his good fortune would have aroused much jealousy in a Court where intrigue and violence were no strangers.^[27] He nevertheless soon became an essential companion for the tsar,^[9] accompanying him on his travels. These are known to have included a long journey to Moscow^[9] and likely most memorably, the tsar's formal visit to exotic and Islamic Kazan in remote Tatarstan, to see for himself the city that had been rebuilt by his mother empress Catherine after being burnt to the ground during a revolt against her rule.^[16]

In March 1800, almost certainly at the tsar's direction, the Medical College awarded Wylie the title Doctor of Medicine and Surgery "for his skills and knowledge in medical science and for his success in the treatment of diseases" despite its dismissal of an earlier personal submission from him. Simultaneously with the award, he was made an honorary member of that body.^[16]

On 23 March 1801, Tsar Paul was assassinated by a group of disaffected military officers. Wylie was the first doctor on the scene.^[11] Later, Paul's body was handed over to him and two other Scots doctors to dissect. Thereafter, Wylie never mentioned whether or not he had found marks of violence on the body.^[28] When asked to prepare the death certificate, Wylie would no doubt have been aware of the prospect of turmoil on the streets if the facts of the tsar's demise became known, and the potential for that to diminish the standing of the incoming tsar. He diplomatically certified the cause of death to be apoplexy.^[11][24] The next day he embalmed Paul's distorted facial features to make them presentable for a public viewing prior to burial.^[11] Wylie's wise judgement and medical skills in this matter were welcomed across the Imperial Court.

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The death of Tsar Paul ushered in the reign of his son Grand Duke Alexander, under the title Tsar Alexander I who quickly establishing himself as a moderate, courteous and benevolent monarch.

Also imbued by his childhood tutors with the values of the Enlightenment, the new tsar had made a start around the year 1809 on plans to initiate Russia's transition to representative government and the abolition of serfdom, but had subsequently made the grim decision to put these aside following opposition within his Imperial Court and hostility to him among the masses, all concerned about the spread of French revolutionary concepts across Europe and the threat to monarchies stemming from Napoleon's past rhetoric and actions there.

Wylie retained his position in the Imperial Court: Tsar Alexander re-appointed him to his former position, and later that year upgraded Wylie's role to Body Surgeon and Physician.^[9] He therefore retained his former influence within the Imperial Court, and his many courtier privileges. In time, he was to become a favourite confidant of the tsar, accompanying him on all his travels, very many of these across vast distances within Russia and Europe, even making a visit to remote Archangel on Russia's north-western arctic coast^[11][16] He was to remain Body Surgeon and Physician until the tsar's death in 1825.^[11]

Despite this lofty role, Wylie nevertheless showed a strong interest in also teaching students at Saint Petersburg's Medico-Chirurgical Academy. After obtaining permission from the academy's Council, he began teaching military medicine there.

In September 1804 Wylie was awarded the Order of Saint Vladimir 4th degree. Also that year, he was granted, for lifetime use, a village near Minsk that had been named Vileiskoe after the Russian version of his name.^[23] Then, sometime before 1808, upon an order of the highest authority, repayment was waived on 22,000 roubles borrowed by him from the Saint Petersburg post office.^[23] Later, he received an annual pension of 1,875 roubles for his work at Borodino, followed in 1826 by an annual pension of 7,120 roubles for his many years of faithful service.

Not surprisingly, by the time of his death he had amassed a fortune of over 1.5 million roubles.^[23]

Around 1804, concerns had re-emerged in Russia about the stability of Europe posed by Napoleon. That year, the tsar invited Wylie into military service, already familiar to him, appointing him Medical Inspector of the Imperial Guard^[17] From this point, the tsar would routinely detach Wylie from his Court duties to enable him to participate in Russia's military conflicts whenever they might occur.

For Wylie, who was also teaching, this new appointment was to establish a pattern of him both teaching military medicine and also personally applying it in the field, these bundled together with his responsibilities as the tsar's Body surgeon and Physician. This pattern of juggling multiple responsibilities was to continue for the remainder of his long and busy career.

In early 1805, Russia, Austria and Britain formed a coalition against further French encroachment within Europe, with war then breaking out in October that year. Ten or so indecisive actions in Austria that month between Austrian and French forces were followed during the following month by battles at Schöngrabern and Wischau in Austria between French and incomplete Russian forces. Tsar Alexander had joined the Austrian campaign in September 1805, accompanied, as always, by Wylie. At Wischau, the tsar put Wylie onto the field of battle directing the Russian medical field services despite him having no army authority other being Medical Inspector of the Imperial Guard. He is said to have shown great courage there, nearly losing his life when his horse was shot, and again when a cannon ball landed two steps away from him.

The decisive battle of the Austrian campaign took place on 2 December 1805 at Austerlitz, north of Vienna.

At the Battle of Austerlitz the entire Russian force and a partial Austrian one engaged Napoleon's entire force.

Tsar Alexander had considered it his personal responsibility to lead the Russian forces at the heart of the battle, this attesting to all the courage of their leader in what was his first battle.^[29] Wylie remained with the tsar throughout except when dispatched on tasks such as treatment to army deputy-commander Mikhail Kutuzov whose face was streaming with blood, grazed by an enemy musket shot.^[29]

Napoleon commenced this battle with the huge advantage of having its location, point in time and conduct all being his own choosing. The alliance armies had been put on the back foot by a number of factors; the tsar's military inexperience, co-ordination difficulties common to coalition armies, and failures within the army of Austria.

The battle concluded towards twilight in comprehensive defeat for the Russian/Austrian force, losing much of its artillery^[30] and its casualties extraordinarily high. There followed a stampede of departing Austrian and Russian regiments, whereby the tsar became separated from his generals, ministers, courtiers and most of his aids, leaving him solely in the company of Wylie, two mounted attendants and two Cossacks.^[29][30][31]

To re-establish order within his forces, the tsar needed to rejoin the missing army command as soon as possible. His carriage lost, he headed south-west on horseback towards the meeting place agreed in the event of the battle being lost.^[29][30][31] The journey was to become an extreme ordeal, widely related in books about the Austerlitz disaster.^{[29][30][31][32][33][34][35]} The small group soon came under fire, an artillery shell detonating just behind the tsar.^[29] Just paces away from the tsar, Wylie's horse was wounded by grapeshot. When later casting a glance around him, the tsar became aware that his retinue had been dispersed and he was now accompanied solely by the equerry and Wylie,^[29][35] who had changed his horse. Further on, cannonball landed just in front of the tsar, leaving him covered with earth,^[29] and shortly after that his small group was swept along with a disorderly crowd of runaways, bringing them back onto the abandoned battlefield where their horses trod mainly on corpses.^[32] They were subsequently interrupted at a ditch which the tsar, a mediocre horseman, hesitated to leap but eventually crossed with the equerry's assistance and they continued their search.^[32]

Toward evening, weary and having difficulty holding himself in the saddle, the tsar dismounted in the middle of a field. Sitting at this tranquil spot, high emotions soon became evident on his face,^[29][35] perhaps his mind now at liberty to reflect on the unexpected defeat and all the unnecessary deaths among his troops. With Wylie and the equerry both standing by and pretending not to notice their tsar's emotions, the three were discovered by the tsar's friend Karl von Toll who had also been following the fleeing armies. Toll quietly approached the tsar and spoke some reassuring words, whereupon they rose and embraced, the tsar then resuming his journey.^[29][31]

In drenching rain, they passed villages crammed with drunken soldiers who didn't recognise their tsar. It was still raining heavily late when they arrived at night at a large market town where they were informed that Emperor Francis of Austria had found refuge there.^[33] Here, the tsar had a hurried conference with Kutuzov.^[29] With no accommodation or carriages to be had there, they rode on. Early in the morning, they eventually stopped at a village where Wylie had found an empty peasant's hut.^[29] with a single candle^[34] and the tsar sleeping on a hastily thrown-together litter of straw.^[29][31] Later, with the tsar awakened by a stomach disorder, Wylie left on horseback in search of some wine for him. Retracing his ride from the market town, but refused wine by the Austrian emperor's entourage there,^[31][33] he finally begged some as a last resort from friendly Cossack horsemen bivouacked along the roadside.^[33] Returning to the hut, he soothed his patient's condition with a preparation of hot wine mixed with chamomile and drops of opium.^[29][33] The remainder of the tsar's retinue only rejoined them around this time.^[19][32]

Three days later, the allied coalition fell apart when Austria entered into a formal peace treaty with France.

A new coalition against France involving Russia, Britain, Prussia, Saxony, and Sweden was formed within months of the collapse of the fourth coalition.

From December 1806 to June 1807 there were three indecisive battles involving Russian and French forces in Poland at Pultusk, Eylau and Heilsberg. Prior to the Battle of Eylau in February 1807 the tsar had put Wylie in charge of organising a general hospital for field forces about 15 miles further east at Königsberg for the 20,000 wounded, 17,000 of them Russians. As had been the case at Wischau in late 1805, Wylie had no army authority for this role other than being Medical Inspector of the Imperial Guard.

The tsar finally appointed him Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health, this within the Ministry of War, its name being changed around 1812 to Chief Army Medical Officer, having oversight of the health of both the Army's combat units and its administrative units. Wylie held this position until his death in 1854.^[14]

The battle at Eylau was followed by a major engagement on in June 1807 at the Battle of Friedland in East Prussia. Now having the authority to do so, Wylie had charge of the provision of the army's medical services.^[20] The battle inflicted an overwhelming defeat for the Russian forces. This was the first occasion that Russian wounded had been dressed in the field of battle, necessarily taking place under the fire of cannon.^[11][36] Also, the Russian doctors often treated enemy wounded as well as their own.^[11][20]

Wylie had attended all but one of the Russian army's battles under this coalition. For his efforts during 1806 and 1807, Wylie was decorated by General Benningsen, the army's commander. The tsar also awarded him another Order of Saint Vladimir, this one being of the 2nd degree.^[37]

The Russian army's defeat at Friedland in June 1807 led to the signing of a Franco-Russian peace treaty between Tsar Alexander and Napoleon at Tilsit in July 1807, this event generally considered these days as the pinnacle of Napoleon's power. Wylie had attended the tsar at Tilsit.

A follow-up meeting between the emperors took place the following year at the Congress of Erfurt in East Prussia, the French seeking to reaffirm the alliance in the face of rising anti-French feeling within the Russian Imperial Court. While there, Napoleon thanked the tsar for the vigour displayed by Russia's medical men in their care of the wounded.^[15]

Wylie accompanied the tsar to Erfurt. On passing through Memel within Russian Lithuania during their westward journey to Erfurt, the tsar would doubtless have paid his respects to his friend, the Prussian king Frederick William III who had fled there with his family after Napoleon had taken control of Berlin two years earlier. It would appear that Wylie was subsequently asked to check the health of the king's wife, Queen consort, Charlotte of Prussia, for he subsequently received a diamond ring from her "at Memel for having cured her, during the journey of the Emperor Alexander to Erfurt to hold the interview with Napoleon".^[15] [NB: The queen's 9-year-old, daughter, also named Charlotte, would later wed the tsar's younger brother Nicholas, and be elevated in 1826 to Empress Alexandra Feodrovina of Russia after Nicholas had ascended to tsar following Alexander's death].

For Queen Charlotte to have been cured, it is more than likely that Wylie's treatment was extended beyond just a few days. Given that Tsar Alexander was unlikely to have been in a position linger, he probably detached Wylie from his retinue to enable the treatment to be continued. This would become a common occurrence over the course of Wylie's role as the tsar's physician.

Wylie had earlier travelled to Memel, accompanying Tsar Alezander there in April 1807 to attend to senior Russian General, Barclay de Tolley. Barclay had been struck in the arm by a round of grapeshot and rendered unconscious^[38] while leading his troops covering the retreating Russian troops following the army's defeat in the Battle of Eylau two months earlier. The wound had been treated at that time, with more than 40 bone splinters removed.^[38] It forced the General to quit his command and take up residence about 250 miles to the east at Memel; where amputation of the hand was subsequently considered due to longstanding severe pain there. Removing a further 36 bone splinters, Wylie saved the hand. Although the hand was to remain troublesome for the rest of Barclay's life, the surgery enabled the General to return to action the following year in Russia's Finnish War against Sweden, even leading a large body troops more than 60 miles across the frozen Gulf of Bothnia during a winter snowstorm. [NB: Arguably one of Russia's best army commanders of that era, by the time of Napoleon's invasion in 1812, he was in command of 1st Army of the West, Russia's largest].

Wylie's battlefield work to that point in time was to be instrumental in his appointment, via an edict of June 1808, as Manager, Medical Section at Russia's War Ministry^[17] In accepting the post, Wylie's written reply to the Minister was: "I will endeavour to do my best to improve every institution of military medicine, even the smallest. By my own example I will encourage my subordinates to do everything for the benefit of the country and will stress the serious nature of this".^[17]

In July, he also became responsible for all academic training of military medicine within Russia as a result of his election as President of Saint Petersburg's Medico-Chirurgical Academy (renamed that year as Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy)^[39] along with its sister annex in Moscow, positions he held until 1838.^[40]

This appointment combined with his 1807 appointment as Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health (its name changed around 1812 Chief Army Medical Officer), Wylie's concurrent involvement in both the teaching of military medicine and the personal in-field application of military medicine of his earlier years had therefore now become substantially magnified into concurrent oversight of all academic teaching of military medicine throughout Russia and responsibility for the in-field application of military medicine throughout all of Russia's armies. The dual responsibilities continued for most of his career, during which he displayed exceptional capacity for switching between the different roles.^[20]

During this lull in major battles, Wylie was involved in small wars with Sweden. During the first of these (February – November 1808), he was deployed with the army's medical staff in Finland, at that time part of Sweden.^[15] A second conflict with Sweden commenced three months later, and upon its successful conclusion in May 1809 Wylie accompanied Tsar Alexander to Torneo, at the river Torne that had formed the western border of Sweden with Swedish Finland, this river now having been agreed as the new western border of Russia's new dependency, the Grand Duchy of Finland.^[15]

The period of Russia's collaboration with Napoleon lasted until December 1810 when the tsar, in desperation, disobeyed a very economically-damaging clause within the Tilsit treaty by opening Russian ports to neutral ships.^[41]

When Russia's collaboration with Napoleon ended in December 1810, Alexander was certain that this would not be the end of the matter. His key government departments were instructed to begin preparations for a renewal of hostilities. Not long afterwards, a small, highly skilled Russian spy cell in Paris and Russia's astute ambassador were able to provide the tsar with sufficient information to suggest that Napoleon was planning to invade Russia during summertime in 1812.^[41]

Russia's Imperial Ministry of War immediately commenced arrangements for massive increases in, inter alia, recruitment and training for reserve army battalions and militia units, cavalry horses, artillery pieces and shells, rifles and bullets, uniforms, stored rations, wagons and animals to haul the army's field equipment and rations.^[41]

Wylie's 1807 appointment was added to in 1812 with an appointment as Director Army Medical Department, Ministry of War, a position he held until 1836.^[14][23]

The combination of these oversight roles would have provided enhanced authority for him to fully and rapidly push through preparations in Russia's military medicine for the oncoming war. In late 1811, his task was quantified to one of providing medical services for an army of 300,000, including no less than 500 doctors.^[20] This was done. [NB: These matters are covered in more detail within a stand-alone paragraph below that provides a full account of Wylie's lifetime contribution to structuring the army's delivery of medical aid to its wounded].

In advance of the coming hostilities, the tsar had also wound up all of Russia's outstanding military commitments. He required Mikhail Kutuzov, commander of Russian forces at war with Turkey since 1806, to quickly complete his task. The tsar also made a peace treaty with Sweden (it later joining Russia's sixth coalition). In absolute secrecy, he also made an agreement with Emperor Francis I, of Austria. Like all client states of France, in the event of France being at war Austria was required to amalgamate its military into the French forces. But in view of the tie established with France via Napoleon's recent marriage to a daughter of Francis, Austria would be permitted the freedom of manoeuvring its own army in tandem with the French force. By the tsar's secret agreement, he placed a Russian army contingent nearby the Austrian border. Following the French invasion, the Russian force and its Austrian counterpart across the border were to manoeuvre towards and away from each other, engaging in just one battle.^[41]

On 24 June 1812, a French force of about 200,000 crossed the Nemen river into Russian Lithuania, the initial wave of about 615,000 troops to enter Russia.^[41] This ushered in an unrelenting period of repeated deadly battles until the surviving French forces, just 18% of their original number, scrambled back across the Nemen in mid-December 1812.^[41] These did so with almost none of their precious, carefully bred and trained army horses, greatly weakening Napoleon's capacity to thereafter make war. The survivors, from the highest to lowest ranks, had bit by bit also discarded along the roadside all of their Moscow loot.^[41][42]

Wylie would personally direct the Russian army's medical services in the major battles held within Russia near Vitebsk, then Smolensk, Borodino, Tarutino, Maloyaroslavets, Vyasma, Krasnoi and Elnia.^[15]

Tsar Alexander commanded the Russian 1st and 2nd Armies in their initial responses to the invasion, then returned to St. Petersburg leaving Wylie in the field augmented with any other doctors that could be spared from elsewhere, including civil hospitals.^[43] At the Battle of Vitebsk and thereafter he was free to direct his entire efforts to wounded soldiers and officers, he accompanying the Russian army on all of its remaining journey eastward to a camp nearby Moscow. After the French retreat from Moscow, Wylie accompanied the Russian army via carriage or sledge, on horseback or on foot as dictated by the terrain and weather, on its westward pursuit of Napoleon's forces all the way to Vilnius and then beyond it to the Neman river border.

Of the battles that took place within Russia, those at Smolensk (16-18 August), Borodino (7 September) and Maloyaroslavets (24 October), were all particularly bloody.^[41]

The high-stakes Battle of Borodino took place on 7 September 1812.

The Borodino battle, with Moscow at stake, was the deadliest single-day battle of the Napoleonic Wars and one of the bloodiest single-day battles in military history until the First Battle of the Marne in 1914. More than a quarter of a million took part, the entire French force being pitted against the combined Russian 1st and 2nd armies. The battlefield, about 88 miles west of Moscow was almost the last realistic terrain for Russia's army to make a stand in defence of that city.^[41]

Accompanying the battle until petering out towards its end was a non-stop, thunderous roar of discharges from some 1,224 artillery pieces in place there,^[41] the air thick with the smoke from that.

Wounds from artillery fire were therefore particularly numerous at Borodino, whether from round shot, explosive shell or cannister Such wounds were generally life changing. This was especially so from wounds by round shot, in those days it being generally considered that for anyone wounded in this way the lucky ones were those who had been killed outright.^[44]

About 44,000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded that day. Wylie had arranged to have multiple tents set up^[45] beyond the battlefield to serve as a central surgical operations centre staffed with surgeons, nurses, and support staff. He is said to have personally performed a remarkably large number of operations there without differentiating between wounded friend and foe.^[23] It quickly became crowded outside the tents, with large numbers of Russian and French wounded being carried in all day and hundreds of others sitting or lying prostrate on the grass, at any time, the while recovering from their surgery.^[45]

In discussing this battle with a British visitor to Saint Petersburg in 1830, Wylie told him that 16,000 wounded had been seen by the medical staff, with this including 567 amputations of legs and arms.^[44]

Wylie also attended the battlefield, as when seeing to Russian 2nd army commander Prince Pyotr Bagration, wounded in the blast from an artillery shell. Wylie removed metal fragments from the General's leg, including one that had pierced a shin bone, but the General had already guessed his wounds to be lethal, and died two weeks later at a small village to which he had been evacuated.^[38]

During the battle, some of the meagre, but nevertheless vital, defensive positions on the Russian left wing were to be captured and recaptured many times, this continuing on and on throughout the day, each time with high casualties. Late in the battle, a redoubt set up with some of the Russian artillery on a large hill on the army's right wing was also captured and recaptured a few times in hand to hand fighting, each event again incurring very high casualties, including the death of Major General Alexander Kutaisov, overall commander of the entire Russian artillery.

After the exhausted opposing forces had come to a standstill^[45] in the late afternoon, Wylie later took up an opportunity to ride in darkness with General Platov and his force of Cossack horseback skirmishers on a bold extended foray across the French front lines.

The battlefield was left littered with dead horses, bloodstained corpses, abandoned cannon and wounded men in agony.^[45]

The following day, neither army was in any position to renew the battle. The Russian force withdrew from the battlefield, thereby technically defeated, but doing so as major strategic victors in what had been a war of attrition in terms of soldiers, horses and artillery. For example, the French had fired off 90,000 artillery rounds during the battle, leaving them enough for just one more battle, with Napoleon the following day ordering his soldiers to collect all of the intact cannon balls scattered across the battlefield.

The army re-assembled at Mojaisk further east toward Moscow. Many of their wounded had been conveyed in carts to places of safety during the battle, with all wounded then borne with the army to Mojaisk.

Twenty seven years after the battle, almost to the day, during inauguration ceremonies at the Borodino battlefield for a monument built there to honour the Russian army's efforts during 1812, Tsar Nicholas presented Wylie with a signed Imperial Rescript in praise of him. [NB: The full rescript is provided within the "Lengthy statements, letters and orations" paragraph at the bottom of this narrative].

Six days after the Borodino battle, a famous high-stakes meeting involving the army's Commander-in-Chief Mikhail Kutuzov and his primary generals was held in a shack at Fili just west of Moscow. There, it was decided to abandon that city without a fight because it would be significantly more disadvantageous to Napoleon if the Russian army was preserved for the time being. After passing through Moscow, the Russian army, initially feigned retreat on the main road to its south-west but doubled back across county to a hidden encampment set up nearby a main road used for southwards travel from the city.^[41]

On September 14, Napoleon arrived in Moscow.

He was expecting to be met by a city representative offering him the keys to the city, and to also to find supplies there. Instead, he found almost the entire population evacuated and the Russian army apparently still in retreat.^[41] Early the next morning, fires set broke out throughout the city, destroying any possibility that the French force could have winter quarters there.

The impact of the fires upon Napoleon's forces was strategically very beneficial to the Russian army. Initially no one admitted responsibility. Whatever he knew or suspected about the fires, the tsar spoke publicly of them as a tragedy, this allowing suspicion to fall upon Napoleon for the deed and aligning with his existing strategy of fostering fury at Napoleon within his Imperial Court, his army and wider Russia. About 12 years after the fires, Count Rostopchín, Governor-General of Moscow at the time of the fires, admitted responsibility for it. He later also set alight his palace at Tarutino, knowing that it would soon be taken by the French, who having finally located the Russian army in that vicinity, had detached some of its force to camp nearby. [NB: in a memoir written 45 years later, its subject mentions visiting Paris in May 1814 when Tsar Alexander and Wylie were there following its capture. He described becoming on good terms with Wylie who told him, in the company also of Rostopchin's son, how he, Rostopchin, that son, General Platov and Sir Robert Wilson (a British officer attached to the Russian army) had been breakfasting together for a final time at Rostopchin's palace but upon seeing the advance guard of the French vanguard coming up the road they all joined in to hurriedly torch the place].^[46]

Napoleon commenced his retreat from Moscow on 19 October 1812.

Despite the lack of supplies and decent shelter resulting from the fires, Napoleon prolonged their stay, expecting a message from Tsar Alexander seeking terms that never came. With snowflakes heralding the oncoming winter he eventually decided to order a retreat commencing 19 October, this proving to be disastrously late.^[41]

Anxious to avoid lack of shelter and mass starvation for his army on its westward retreat out of Russian territory, Napoleon had to avoid the war-ravaged route on which it had travelled to that point. He planned to move south east, eventually turning northwest onto a route beyond Maloyaroslavets that would provide his forces with both sustenance and an eventual return to the former route fairly close to the point of his army's entry into Russia. (Also important to his calculations, was that to the rest of Europe, especially France, his southward movement didn't look like a withdrawal).

Advised of this movement by army scouts, the army's commander, Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, who to this point had been content for the Russian army to await replenishment of his army with new inductees and demolishing minor French ventures out of Moscow, now ordered the Russian army to race south to block further French movement in that direction.^[41] The armies came together at the savage, high-stakes Battle of Maloyaroslavets, during which the town changed hands at least eight times. The French force achieved a short-lived tactical victory. At two in the morning after the battle Kutuzov retired his entire army further south, positioning it astride the road and blocking any French movement past that point other than via another Borodino-like battle. This being out of the question for them, the French headed back to the devastated route westwards.^[41] Wylie was with the Russian army during these events.

There followed an unbroken chain of battles until the surviving French forces scrambled back across the Nemen just beyond Vilnius in mid-December 1812. A few of these battles were extremely being bloody affairs, but most were fairly brief skirmishes between the French rearguard and the advance guard of the Russian pursuers. At times, Field Marshal Kutuzov slowed the pursuit to merely shepherd the French force towards the border, reluctant to waste Russian lives attacking the army of a country that was not Russia's greatest threat in his view. (To him, Russia's natural enemy was Britain because of its aggressively imperialist policy, its unbeatable navy and the resources available to it from its vast empire).^[41] His Generals appeared to have a different view, and Cossack horsemen and local peasants would unhesitatingly pick off any enemy troops venturing away off the road in search for food.^[41]

Just 18% of the French forces that had entered Russian territory since June made it back over the Niemen. By then, the Russian army was also not in good shape. The long period of unbroken travel had left it almost as exhausted as it had the enemy's, and their route along the war-devastated roads of Napoleon's invasion had also left it only moderately less starved.^[41] Also, the short duration of its rest near Moscow had been insufficient to induct replacements for many of the men and horses lost in the prior attrition warfare.

Kututuzov's force had ejected the rearguard French force from Vilnius ["Wilna" at that time] just short of the Niemen river. There they found a large, war-torn hospital packed with frozen dead and freezing wounded of the French force, these abandoned by their army. The major portion of the wounded were nationals of Napoleon's client states, levied by him into the invading French force. Tsar Alexander, who had remained in Saint Petersburg for most of the pursuit, and rejoined Kutuzov's army around the time it entered Wilna, accordingly sent messengers to the sovereigns of the client states advising them about their wounded left at Vilnius. Money subsequently flowed in from the sovereigns for assisting Russia's treatment of the wounded. Napoleon, who had long beforehand returned to France, sent none.^[46] On the other had "Alexander and Constatine were indefatigable in their attentions to the prisoners during several weeks that they remained at Wilna" ^[47] The army and its doctors having departed Vilnius immediately in pursuit of the enemy, Wylie may well have been alone in performing the medical aspects of these 'attentions', an unimaginably large task.

In 1819, a British Quaker visiting Saint Petersburg for discussions with the tsar, met with Wylie multiple times, Wylie telling him on one occasion that "the horrors of war almost exceed imagination, and the recital of what he had been eye-witness to at Wilna ...was extremely trying to the feelings".^[48]

The outcome of the pre-war efforts of the Medical Department of the Imperial Ministry of War had been impressive. Russian military doctors had worked throughout this campaign as part of a coherent system to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield for recuperation or for surgery at field hospitals. This complex mechanism was set up by Wylie.

In a subsequent letter to Tsar Alexander from Kutuzov, he included a statement summing up his very favourable impression of Wylie's battlefield performance over the course of the war within Russia.^[20] The statement's full text is included within the "Lengthy statements, letters and orations" paragraph at the bottom of this narrative.

With the departure of French forces from Russian territory, Tsar Alexander considered that Europe's chance to finally be rid of Napoleon would slip away unless the Russian army pursued them. At personal risk to his reign, he brushed aside considerable opinion that Napoleon would henceforth be other's problem, and in early 1813, via outstanding diplomacy conducted with states that had become puppet allies of Napoleon, he formed a coalition that eventually included, inter alia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Württemburg, Baden, Saxony and Mecklenburg-Schwerin. After waiting some time to fill some of the gaps in the Russian army, with new recruits, he resumed the pursuit of French forces through Poland, Prussia, Germany and finally into France.^[41] Apart from a nine-week mid-year truce, this campaign entailed unrelenting minor and major battles and numerous skirmishes involving small detached army units until the tsar's coalition forces stormed into Paris on 31 March 1814.^[41]

Wylie resumed his journey with the Russian army pursuit until the coalition forces had entered Paris.^[13] By then, he had accompanied the main Russian force for its entire journey from Vitebsk to Moscow and then from Moscow to Paris, and been present at all of their battles other than very many skirmishes between detachments of each army.^[13]

Wylie would personally direct the Russian army's medical services in the major battles held during 1813-1814 in Germany near Lützen, then at Bautzen, Dresden, Kulm, Leipzig, and Hanau, these followed by battles across France in 1814 near Brienne, then at Bar-sur-Aube, Arcis-sur-Aube, Fere-Champenoise and finally at Montmartre under the walls of Paris.^[15] Particularly bloody were the battles at Dresden and Liepzig.

The Battle of Dresden took place on 26 and 27 August 1813.

At this Battle, the alliance forces of Russia and Prussia together with those of recent alliance partner Austria were pitted against those of France and Saxony. Austrian general, Karl von Schwartzenberg was in overall command of the alliance forces. The battle ended with a conclusive victory to Napoleon, leaving about 15,000 coalition soldiers wounded or killed. Tsar Alexander and Wylie were there, Wylie likely sharing with his coalition counterparts the oversight of medical attention to those soldiers not killed outright. Such was his reputation as a skilled surgeon, he was called to personally attend to the wounded allied General, Jean Moreau, his legs shattered by a cannonball while standing next to Tsar Alexander. Wylie was to amputate both of Moreau's legs.^{[38][49][50][51]}

The Dresden battle was followed two days later by a battle at Kulm.

At the Battle of Kulm, on 29 and 30 August 1813, a joint Russian, Austrian and Prussian force was opposed to the French force a 120 miles south west of Dresden shortly after the conclusion of the Dresden battle.

Shortly after the battle, Wylie conducted surgery on the wounded Sir Charles Stewart, 3rd Marquis of Londonderry, a former British officer attached to their Berlin Embassy but participating here as ''Military Commissioner'' to the allied armies. The event was described within a journal of his companion at the battle, Sir Robert Wilson, a British officer attached to the Russian army. The two had been riding together within the army's advance when an artillery shell burst close by, a piece of the shell striking Londonderry's thigh. With shells coming thick around them, Londonderry was taken to a safer spot and the wound dressed by a regimental aid. Concerned, Wylie attended Londonderry that evening, removing the sharp point of a splinter deeply embedded within the wound.^[50] In a subsequent book Londonderry stated of Wylie: "...[he] showed me a care and attention which I can never forget".^[52]

The battle proved inconclusive, this complement of the allied force later merging into the entire allied force to eventually assemble outside Leipzig.

The next major battle, at Leipzig in October 1813, spelt the ruin of Napoleon's campaign in Russia, Poland and Germany.

The Battle of Liepzig took place from 16 to 19 October 1813. An almost-complete assembly of the armies allied at that point in time (Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden and Mecklenburg-Schwerin) amassed outside the city to strike a decisive blow against the French forces in place there, the alliance forces being boosted during the battle by a large number of Napoleon's conscripts from Saxony defecting en-mass to the allied forces. Despite the alliance forces once again suffering co-ordination difficulties, wholesale defeat of the French forces was clear to the allies by early on the fourth day of battle, the French then continuing a retreat that they had clandestinely commenced after dusk the day before, via the city centre, and the alliance armies urgently battling their way into the city centre in an attempt to forestall that retreat.^[41]

For this battle, Wylie had been charged with providing medical aid to the wounded of all nationalities.

The battle was to be the bloodiest of the Napoleonic Wars. Over 400,000 rounds of artillery ammunition had been expended and casualties were shockingly high — 80 to 100 thousand killed, wounded or missing. In visiting Saint Petersburg, an American physician, George Bacon Wood, met and conversed at length with Wylie a few years prior to the latter's death. In talking about the battle, Wylie told him that on that last day of the battle he had taken charge of 40,000 wounded, not just wounded alliance soldiers but also wounded French soldiers left by Napoleon to die on the battlefield.^[53]

With this battle decided, and Napoleon's entire 1812-1813 campaign a total failure, he now directed his forces westward towards relative safety beyond the river Rhine.

The Leipzig battle was followed by one at Hanau nearby Frankfurt am Main in western Germany.

At the Battle of Hanau, on 30 and 31 October 1813, an Austro-Bavarian army opposed French forces. Although Russian soldiers did not participate in this battle, Wylie was there, perhaps in charge of an available unit of his medical team. Such was Wylie's reputation as a skilled surgeon, after the battle's conclusion he was called upon to personally extract a musket ball from the side of the Bavarian Field Marshal, Karl Philipp von Wrede, overall commander of the joint Austro-Bavarian force.^[54]

Later (in 1814), after re-instatement of the monarchy in France, the new king would award Wylie the Legion of honour for Russian field medics and surgeons treating wounded French soldiers along with their wounded countrymen, as had notably taken place at this battle and at the battle of Friedland in 1807.^[55]

Battles and numerous skirmished then resumed across France in late January 1814.

The French cause had become hopeless even before the Battle of Fere-Champenoise, on 25 March 1814, 90 miles short of Paris. This was the coalition army's last battle before it stormed Paris on 31 March 1814. Having almost completed the exhausting chase to Napoleon's capital, the tsar and his entourage narrowly avoided disaster when four round shots of friendly fire landed close by the tsar as he was directing Prussian, Russian and Cossack cavalry forces, the shots coming from the Russian cavalry's artillery unit during the rapidly-shifting engagement.

Following entry of the allied armies into Paris on 31 March 1814, Tsar Alexander received the cordial thanks of all the allied sovereigns for the vigour displayed by Russia's medical men in their care of the wounded.^[15]

In late April the tsar had paid his respects to Joséphine de Beauharnais, Napoleon's former and later abandoned wife. She was being feted at Château de Malmaison, her home outside Paris, by all of the alliance sovereigns, their family members and their important officials. On 14 May, at dinner with her, the tsar found her unwell. The following day she was very ill, and Wylie was asked to visit her. That continued until late May when according to a letter quoted within a 19th century journal: "Sir James found her in a hopeless state, with every symptom of poison. She died soon after he had left her. He made no observation on that death as a crime. He merely mentioned it as a fact".^[56] ther accounts differ in stating that she died of acute pneumonia.^[57][58] Prior to Josephines death on 29 May the tsar was requested by Eugène de Beauharnais, Josephene's son (French Viceroy of Italy), to pass on to Wylie a diamond box from him on behalf of his mother and his sister Hortense, the queen of Holland: viz: "the Viceroy of Italy, on the part of the Empress [sic] Josephine and Queen Hortense de Malmaison, a diamond box, bearing the cypher Eugene".^[15] The tsar presumably passed the gift on to Wylie at Paris. It is impossible to know if the gift had been intended out of appreciation of Wylie's attendance to their mother or appreciation of him discerning the true facts of her being poisoned. Eugen and Hortense would have been aware of the intense irritation within the impending Bourbon monarchy at the fuss being made over Josephine, and they would have guessed that her poisoning would also benefit its reinstatement by removing from calculations a person widely loved by the French masses.

Tsar Alexander and his army remained at Paris until Napoleon had been exiled to Elba in April and accession of Louis XVIII to the throne of France in May. The tsar was then free to leave Paris and make a celebratory visit to England. Wylie was included within the Tsar's extensive retinue,^[14] and on 10 June at the Ascot races he was knighted at Alexander's request by the Prince Regent, becoming Sir James Wylie, a Knight of the United Kingdom.^[59] No one at this impromptu ceremony had a sword needed for the traditional accolade except for General Platov who offered his.^[14] This handsome scimitar of the ataman of the tsar's Cossack forces, its handle and sheath decorated with jewels was then presented to Wylie by Platov as a keepsake, and it is these days displayed within the Kremlin Armoury.^[18]

During a visit on the Royal Navy warship Impregnable a few days after Wylie had received his knighthood, Tsar Alexander mentioned to the Prince Regent that he had made his own physician a baronet, upon which the regent said, "Well, I will make yours one" and then asked Wylie to consider himself a baronet as a patent was to be immediately ordered. The tsar, who was at that time designing a coat of arms^[24][60] for Wylie, requested of the Prince Regent if those arms could be permitted to include supporters, and although baronets, as such, are not entitled to have supporters on their arms, his request was granted in appreciation of Wylie's services.^[61] [NB: It would have been highly unusual for supporters to be granted other than to peers of the kingdom and members of the royal family].

Tsar Alexander had intended to then travel within Britain as far north as Edinburgh, returning directly to Saint Petersburg from Edinburgh's adjacent port Leith.^[7] This would have enabled Wylie to visit his home town, but the tsar was forced change his plans and the chance was lost.^[7] They instead travelled from London back to Paris, and the patent creating Wylie a baronet in the name and on behalf of the Prince Regent and with permission for Wylie to have supporters on his coat of arms specifically mentioned therein, was duly delivered to Wylie there in July 1814.^[14][59][62]

In designing Wylie's coat of arms, the tsar took account of an incident where; in dressing a soldier's wound on the field of battle, Wylie had pricked his own finger, which led eventually to its amputation. The tsar suggested to Wylie "therefore, you must have two of the guards to support you; a Cossack for your crest, that he may defend you, and an eagle introduced in your shield, that if the other two cannot protect you, it may fly away with you, and bear you clear of all your enemies".^[61]

The coat of arms is indicative of the bearer's great love of Russia, especially for its Cossack horsemen.^[63] It also reflects the fact that the uniform of the supporting guards was that of the elite Semyonovsky Life Guards Regiment, Tsar Alexander's most admired military unit.^[64]

Above the shield, a Don Cossack with lance in hand gallops to the right. Below, the upper torso of a knight wearing an open-faced helmet signifies the bearer to be either a baronet or knight. Further down is the double-headed Russian eagle, this also being the badge of the Imperial Russian army. Below that, is a blood-stained glove together with a fox typically present on Wylie coats of arms, then two stars further down. At the bottom of the shield is Wylie's motto given in Latin; Labore et Scientia (i.e., By Work and Knowledge),^[14][18] this described incisively by historian K. Vasiliev as "a motto that accurately conveys the character and activities of the bearer".^[14] The Semyonovsky Life Guard supporters stand at attention each side of the shield.

Because Wylie had never relinquished his allegiance as a British subject, he had never become the subject of any of the tsars he had worked so closely with, and this fact should have barred him from receiving any Russian title of nobility.^[53] Such was Tsar Alexander's regard for Wylie that in early 1816 he ordered that the Diploma of Nobility of the Russian Empire be made out to him and that his British coat of arms to be annexed to it.^[65][66] However, more was required to achieve this, and in February 1824 his title as a British baronet was recognized by the State Council of the Russian Empire, making him the only baronet in the country's history.^[67] A final approval then occurred in August 1847 with the ruling: ''By the decisions of the St. Petersburg Noble Deputies' Assembly of April 22 and September 23, 1844, the actual privy councillor and knight baronet Yakov Vasilyevich Villier ...physician-in-ordinary to His Imperial Majesty, chief medical inspector of the army, was recognized in hereditary noble status and included in Part V of the Noble Genealogical Book; this determination was confirmed by the decree of the Heraldry of the Governing Senate of December 5, 1847, ...Genealogical book of the nobles of St. Petersburg province, 1842-1845''.^[68]

In 1814 Wylie was awarded Russia's Order of Saint Anna, 1st degree, this upgraded with diamonds in 1821. At around the same time he was also promoted in Imperial Russia's Table of Ranks to Actual State Councillor,^[20] equivalent in rank to an army major-general.

At some time during 1815, Wylie acquired Napoleon's 'pocket-glass' which would have been a pocket-size battlefield telescope: viz: "Napoleon's pocket glass, used by him at the battle of Waterloo, was presented by Eleanor Duchess of Northumberland. It was given to Hugh Duke of Northumberland by Sir James Wylie, Physician-General to the Emperor Alexander I. of Russia in 1815".^[69]

Following Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo in mid-1815, the following seven or eight years involved the tsar (and consequently Wylie) undertaking constant travel and expending a great deal of time for the tsar to engage in one-on-one talks and conference discussions with his former alliance partners directed at obtaining peace treaties with France and then forestalling any emergence within Europe of undesirable consequences of Napoleons former influence there. The primary elements of the tsar's engagement were the following:

A second treaty of Paris and formation of a Quadruple Alliance in 1815 followed by a Quintuple Alliance in 1818

A second Treaty of Paris to that signed between the main 1813-14 alliance partners Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia and France after the allied Army captured Paris in March 1814, was required after Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo. Negotiations on this treaty, and signing of it took place during November 1815. The treaty also renewed the Congress System, now seeking to stabilise disrupted inter-country relations within Europe due to the war, and pledging each signatory to a military alliance aimed at crushing recurrence of revolutionary outbreaks in Europe like those that preceded the French Revolution, being of high importance to the main 1813-14 alliance partners. All monarchies, they were intent upon forestalling any potential agitation for transition to a republic within the other European monarchies. Accordingly, a formal Quadruple Alliance of Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia was put into place concurrent with the Treaty of Paris, this lasting until renamed as the Quintuple Alliance upon inclusion of Bourbon France in 1818.

Attending the Congress of Vienna from September 1814 to June 1815

At the Congress of Vienna, held over more than eight months, Wylie attended Tsar Alexander tor his tortuous series of high-level meetings between key envoys of the primary coalition partners and France to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order in the wake of Napoleon's downfall. These meetings became collectively termed the Congress of Vienna.

With each party there having its own vested interests to maintain, their collective craving for inside knowledge on the positions to be taken by other parties led to a great deal of spy activity. Wylie himself became the target of intensive spying by the Austrian secret police, this generally involving agents inserting themselves into congress social functions and reporting back on his conversations there. None of the reports extracted from the Secret Police files appears anything but bland.^[70][71]

The tsar's attempts between 1815 to 1822 to form his "Holy Alliance".

Following the Vienna Congress, the devout Christian Alexander had hoped to build on his success in recruiting some parties there into his idealistically conceived Holy Alliance partnership which he envisaged as a acting as paternal guide to the affairs of Europe in accord with Christian ethics. He gave up on this project following the failure of the 1822 Congress of Verona.

Attending the Congress of Troppau from July to November 1820.

A meeting was held at Troppau in Austrian Silesia, being a conference of the Quintuple Alliance to discuss means of suppressing the revolution in Naples of July 1820, and at which the Troppau Protocol was signed on 19 November 1820.

Attending the Congress of Verona in late 1822.

Wylie also attended the tsar at the nine-week Congress of Verona held in late 1822 for discussions between leaders and foreign ministers of Russia, Austria, Prussia, France and England aimed at reaching a mutual understanding in regard to the revolutionary situation in Spain, recent outbreak of a Greek war of independence from the Ottoman Empire and the disputed Austrian rule in Northern Italy. An indication of Wylie's enlarged role in attending the tsar when travelling beyond Saint Petersburg is a report of him a number of required to test Verona's water sources.^[48]

Earlier bonds between the alliance partners had begun falling away in the face of self-interest, and the congress achieved very little.^[9]

Alexander was also unsuccessful in his hopes to build on his earlier success in recruiting some of the parties at Vienna into his "Holy Alliance". He left Verona disillusioned and depressed.^[9]

The years of disaster imposed upon Europe by Napoleon had changed the tsar into a rather reactionary monarch, and around this time he abandoned his earlier plans for Russia's transition to representative government and the abolition of serfdom. This eventually had its input into anti-monarchy agitation later that century, and its catastrophic aftermath for Russia over much of the 20th century.

A view into the strong relationship between Wylie and the tsar was manifest in August that year when Wylie was badly injured in a carriage rollover near the small town of Novomyrhorod, south of Kyiv. He was afterwards visited there by a nephew (another James Wylie at Saint Petersburg's imperial court, he the Personal Physician to Grand Prince Michael), and in a subsequent letter to his father in Scotland he recounted, as follows, what Sir James had told him about the tsar's care for him: "The attentions of H.I.M. to Sir James upon this occasion were such as can be forgotten neither by him nor me — they were really those of a brother to a brother. He remained in Novomirogod three days after the accident, gave every direction for the comfort and care of Sir James, repeatedly sat with him himself, and when obliged to continue his journey, there were by his order couriers sent off every day to him with reports 'till the danger had gone by".^[72]

In early 1824, Wylie's shrewd clinical judgement and boldness were never more obvious than when discolouration accompanied by severe pain appeared in the emperor's leg, this being a major recurrence of erysipelas that had occasionally come and gone since the tsar had injured the leg in his own carriage rollover while visiting the lands of his Don Cossacks in 1818.^{[9] [73]}This time, the erysipelas appeared to have spread to the rest of his body, and signs of gangrene appeared.^[9][18] Advisers and other doctors within the imperial court were pressing for amputation of the leg, no doubt aware of possible murderous mob reaction to them in the streets if the tsar were to die without them having taken any prior action. The doctors were even provided with passports to facilitate their escape in that event.^[43] But despite the danger, Wylie remained resolute in advising against amputation. Slowly, the complaint yielded to cautery and the lancet, and the leg was saved.^[11][73]

Such was Wylie's close attachment to Tsar Alexander that in June 1824 he was the person chosen by senior staff member, Prince Pyotr Volkonsky, to advise the tsar about the death of his last surviving child, Sophie.^[74] Treated by her own personal physician, Sophie had died of tuberculosis.

In late 1825, Wylie was included in the tsar's small entourage at an informal stay at Taganrog on Russia's southern Sea of Azov coast when the tsar died from an unidentified fever.^[75] The tsar and his retinue had recently returned to Taganrog from long westward and southward journeys as far as Sevastopol, near the southernmost tip of the Crimean Black Sea coast.^[75]

Summarize Timeline Top Qs Fact Check

After a delay stemming from confusion about the legitimate heir to the crown and the resulting Decembrist revolt, the deceased tsar's brother, Nicholas, was finally crowned on 3 September 1826 as Tsar Nicholas I.

Important elements of the new tsar's character were quite contrary to those of his predecessor. He was both an authoritarian and quite uninterested in Alexander's enlightened but abandoned plans to initiate Russia's transition to representative government and to abolish serfdom.

Despite the dissimilar characteristics of the new tsar, the Scottish doctor quickly forged a close relationship with him and continued to enjoy imperial confidence under him until his death exactly one year prior to the tsar's.^[27] Doubtless, this relationship would already have been quite close, given that 27 years earlier Wylie had cured the Nicholas's future mother-in-law, Queen Charlotte of Prussia.^[15]

Wylie was one of the individuals honoured at the tsar's coronation by a notice from the emperor, being presented with a valuable snuff-box accompanied by a rescript, expressing his acknowledgement of Wylie's services as chief of the medical staff.^[76][77] In 1828, he was also awarded the Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky 3rd degree, upgraded in 1838 with a diamond badge.^[23][78]

During these latter years of his career, Wylie's roles no longer included personal attendance on the battlefield

Wylie was in his 60th year when Russia commenced the 1828-1829 Russo-Turkish War. Both his age and his increasing administrative burdens^[18] militated against personal involvement in battlefield medicine. Also; the Military Medical Academy had been graduating Russian doctors who would very-capably assume that role. However, it appears that he did continue to inspect military hospitals all over Russia, at least those having a role in existing warfare.^[63]

He remained physician to Tsar Nicholas, president of the Military Medical Academy, Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health (later renamed to Chief Army Medical Officer, continuing there until his death (47 years in total there); and he continued in an administrative capacity in various other roles. These included his 1843 appointments as Manager of the Court Medical Section (within the then Imperial Court Ministry), and also Chairman of the Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy's new Military Medical Research Committee.^[17][20]

At the academy, he continued to maintain a particularly close oversight of the regulations founded by him there; updating these personally to take into account the academy's ongoing expansion in size and the widening of its remit.^[20]

As mentioned, he had no battlefield involvement during the 1828-1829 Russo-Turkish War. Within a written summary of his wartime services to Russia written about three years prior to his death, he simply wrote: "the medical officers, who had formerly been pupils of the Academy, following my example and instructions, were distinguished for zeal and assiduity in their attendance on the sick at Shumla, Varna and Humas".^[15] However, it appears that he may have continued his inspections of military inspections. It is certainly known that he travelled to inspect hospitals in Russia's south during the 1828 phase of this war that involved prologued sieges of Shumla, Varna, and as far as Hamus in Bulgaria.^[63]

He likewise had no battlefield involvement during the Pole's 1830-1831 uprising against Russian control over a large portion of their true lands which had been established at the Vienna Conference under the title Kingdom of Poland.^[15]

A continent-wide Cholera pandemic passed from east to west through Russia between 1829 and 1832. Cholera's cause and applicable medical interventions against it were completely unknown at that time, this resulting in significant loss of life. Upon the disease reaching Saint Petersburg, Wylie, in his capacity as Chief Army Medical Officer would routinely assemble groups of guard doctors and accompany them to visit cholera patients in the Artillery Hospital, the city's primary military hospital, this located close by the Miliary Medical Academy. There, in bold alignment with his doctor's duty, he would examine each patient, drawing the doctors' attention to manifestations of the disease in each case, and then require each of the doctors to do the same.^[17][20]

Around 1831, he published in the Military Medical Journal the essay Description of the Symptoms of Epidemic Cholera and Dividing it into Different Types. The article was accompanied by the detailed accounts that he had been reporting weekly in regard to how he had treated Cholera patients, the medications that he had prescribed, his direct application of pharmaceuticals onto their bodies, and the outcomes from his post-mortem dissections.^[17]

Following the westward advance of the epidemic, Wylie went to Russian Poland where he conducted thorough inspections of more than 25 military hospitals, afterwards sending off a detailed report of each inspection to the War Ministry.^[17] "Without knowing what it is to be tired, he could spend some five or six hours at a time in a hospital. He would never leave any of its departments without inspection even though different sections of the same hospital were often in separate governmental and private buildings in different parts of the city’, wrote a doctor who often accompanied him. He had also been provided with authority to inspect civilian hospitals there, advising in each instance his observations about their treatment of Cholera patients and any recommendations for improvements he saw necessary.^[17]

In 1838, Wylie resigned as president of the Military Medical Academy

Wylie's multiple roles had prevented him from regularly fulfilling his role as chairman of the academy's Conference, but he is said to have always remained fully aware of what was going on at the academy, intervening, when necessary, on matters such as its instruction.^[23] However, in 1838, this removal from day-to-day oversight at the academy caused him to overlook a tragic incident at the academy and its appalling aftermath. Considering himself ultimately responsible for this, he submitted a formal request to resign as President.^[79] The full circumstances of this matter were:

• Around 1834 or 1835, he had arranged for a poor Polish man to be enrolled as one of the academy's government-funded pupils. In 1838 the student failed his final chemistry exam several times, which he put down to hostility towards him by the professor of that subject, a man observed by students to be rancorous and partial. Because failure to pass the final examination meant being assigned to the army as a medic for six years, the student requested a repeat of the examination, stressing that his mother and sister would die of hunger without access to his government grant. A repeat examination was again marked as failed. With revenge on his mind and having taken poison to prevent punishment, he then publicly plunged a pen-knife into the professor's stomach.^[79]
• The incident was reported to the stern disciplinarian Tsar Nicolas Ist, who ordered "punishment by the gauntlet to the full strictness of the law". All academy students were ordered to attend the flogging or otherwise face expulsion, and in due course they assembled at the Arakcheyev barracks where two ranks of garrison soldiers were lined up with drummers at each end. The student died during the ensuing gauntlet.^[79] Presumably, senior academy staff present there had all felt powerless to intervene.
• Wylie's application for release from his post was immediately granted. His record of academy service states: "Upon the application of Imperial decree, presented to the governing Senate, he is discharged from the post of President of the Imperial Saint Petersburg Medico-chirurgical Academy - 27 November 1838 ..." This is followed by "For constantly outstanding and zealous service as President of the Medico-chirurgical Academy, he is most graciously bestowed the diamond badge of the Order of Alexander Nevsky".^[79]

It appears that afterwards continued to feel a father's affection for the academy. Via numerous petitions from him, the academy's doctors received a sizeable salary increase in 1843, this to be periodically increased by 25% for every 5 years of service, and he also strived to obtain improvements in the living conditions of the academy students.^[20] And in his will, Wylie bequeathed 100,000 roubles to the academy to pay for scholarships directed towards its best students traveling abroad for training,^[18] with the interest on this sum to be used to enable sons of poor military doctors to also study at the academy.^[23]

In April 1841, Wylie was promoted in Imperial Russia's Table of Ranks to Actual Privy Councillor, equivalent in rank to an army general-in-chief, this being the highest honour given to any Russian military doctor.^[20]

A document written by Wylie about three years prior to his death gives a good summing up of the extent of his military activity: He stated that across his entire career he had travelled with the army for more than two hundred thousand versts [about 133,000 English miles], "either on foot or on horseback, or in a carriage or sledge", and that as Chief Inspector of Medical Affairs he had committed to his care more than six hundred thousand sick or wounded soldiers in almost every European country except Spain.^[15] [NB: The entire text of this document is given within the paragraph "Lengthy statements, letters and orations" at the end of this narrative].

That was solely travel with the army. Around 1830, when chatting with a Royal Navy officer on a visit to Saint Petersburg, Wylie had stated that under Tsar Alexander he had travelled 210,000 versts [almost 140,000 miles] either with the Russian army or in accompanying the tsar on his travels.

His document also stated "In these various wars I have been three times wounded, viz: 1st, with a dagger in the middle of the right thigh; 2ndly, by a musket-ball in the left shoulder; and 3rdly, in the left hand, rendering it necessary to amputate the index finger".^[15]

When younger, the tall, well built, strong and invariably healthy Wylie was very active.^[20] He liked playing billiards,^[23] but otherwise he enjoyed vigorous sports such as gymnastics, swimming, and fencing along with ice skating and bear shooting^[80] in winter. An outstanding rider, he also passionately loved the hunt with his pointer dogs.^[20][23] And until his last days his physical and mental health remained sound, being characterised by excellent memory and lively interest in both current affairs and literature.^[17][20] His home was open to guests at any time and he remained always busy.^[20] Despite his elevated status and collaboration with Saint Petersburg's upper echelons, he always preferred his circle of Russian doctors, and for the last 15 years of his life a routine of regular informal lunches at his home or at theirs had been established at his suggestion.^[20] In Saint Petersburg or when travelling he would rather have dinner with a senior army doctor than with the city government or other notables. With the young, he listened without interrupting, was strict but fair, and helped where he could.^[20]

He died at Saint Petersburg on 2 March 1854, aged 85.^[16] From shortly after his arrival in Russia aged 21, 63 years had been spent within a whirlwind of historic European crises during which the performance of his multiple responsibilities was not found wanting.

He had still been reading and signing official papers on the day of his death.^[20] He was buried at Saint Petersburg's Volkovo Lutheran Cemetery, with full imperial honours, attended by Tsar Nicholas and all of the members of the court.^[16] Befittingly, he was spared the personal tragedy of his country of birth joining on 28 March the Ottoman Empire in its war against his beloved adopted country (this later known as the Crimean War).

He had been highly valued by all of the Russian emperors with whom he had closely worked – Paul I, Alexander I and Nicolas I – and valued also by, inter alia, the famous Russian generals M.I. Kutuzov, P.M. Bagration, M.B. Barklay de Tolly and N.V. Repnin.^[81]

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As discussed, Wylie's parents would have scraped by, much like almost all local residents but they were able to give their first and second sons, William and James, enough education to prepare them for teaching and medicine, although James subsequently had trouble scraping together the money to pay for the lectures he needed to attend at Edinburgh University.

William set up a small school in Dundee where he was Master. Their third son, George, followed his father's occupation, while their fourth and fifth sons, Robert and Walter, both became, in turn, novice seafarers, shipmasters and ship owners.

Wylie remained on very good terms with his family in Scotland. His father died at Kincardine-on-Forth in 1807 without having again seen him after his departure for Russia. However, his widowed mother did later pay a visit to Saint Petersburg; where she appears to have received pleasing attention from a dutiful son. When she afterwards had returned to Kincardine, she caused some astonishment by appearing in church with an Indian shawl and a pair of gold spectacles given to her at Saint Petersburg.^[4]

Walter owned a number of brigs, one named "Baronet". His journeys included Saint Petersburg, and almost annually the two brothers dined together there. James would routinely see Walter off with presents for his Scots relatives in Scotland. On one occasion James presented him to Tsar Alexander who invited him to dine with them that evening. He duly found himself having dinner on gold plate at the Imperial Palace with his brother, the tsar and three nobles. Although French was usually spoken at the royal table, this conversation was conducted in English out of consideration to the Scot's nationality, a courtesy that he never forgot.^[8] Wylie was also presented to the tsar on another occasion. In 1814 he was at Rotterdam when James and the tsar arrived there.

During James' stay in London in 1814 he gave £500 to his five nieces, and other Wylie family members were likewise treated. Walter also received presents from his brother, including £500, a gold and platinum cup and saucer, two diamond rings of great value, and a chronometer watch given to him at Rotterdam.^[8][18]

Walter's son William also visited Sir James when he travelled there as sailor boy, and received from Sir James a silver pen and penholder conjoined with a mathematical instrument.^[8]

Two sons of Sir James' eldest brother William went out from Dundee to him, and spent the remainder of their lives there.^[8]

One of these, another James Wylie, "James William Wylie 2nd" (Яков Васильевич Виллие 2-й), arrived in Saint Peterburg in 1817 and from 1824 became principle physician to Grand Duke Michael,^[82] the youngest brother of former tsar Alexnder, and was awarded the distinction of Actual State Councillor in Imperial Russia's Table of Ranks and in 1840 he received the Order of Saint Vladimir at the celebrations of his uncle's 50 years of service to Russia.^[83] With the Grand Duke on a visit to England in 1843, he was knighted at Windson Castle by Queen Victoria, becoming Saint Petersburg's second Sir James Wylie.^[84] He was married to Vera Rühl, daughter of court physician Ivan F. Rühl, a former colleague of Sir James Wylie Bart. His son Michael (Михаил Яковлевич Вилье) became a watercolourist, was awarded the title of Academician, and has paintings at museums in Saint Petersburg, Moscow and Rybinsk. The tsars Alexander III and Nichola II were in turn patrons of him, buying his works for their collections. These days he appears to be moderately known in Russia for his depictions of ancient Russian architectural monuments, street scenes and landscapes. many done at Yaroslavl, but also done at other locations within Russia and Europe.

William's other son, George Wylie, became a prosperous Saint Petersburg merchant.

William's grandson, Richard Wylie was a Saint Petersburg merchant for many years, becoming one of the most respected British residents there before relocating to England.^[8]

Wylie remained a lifetime bachelor, although he had twice considered marriage. A marriage to an Englishwoman living in Saint Petersburg recommended to him in 1815 by Tsar Alexander I did not eventuate as Wylie would not give up his high position and relocate to England, as was required by the bride.^[20][23] Then, in August 1823, during a courtship at the small town of Novomyrhorod, south of Kyiv, his wedding arrangements fell through after he was badly injured in the carriage rollover mentioned earlier in this narrative, his injuries confining him to bed for a prolonged period of time after surgery for a compound fracture of the knee and smashed fibula became dangerously gangrenous beneath their plaster cast.^[20][72]

He had become a very wealthy man before he died and had asked three Russian doctors, all close friends, to be executors of his Russian will (I.V. Enokhin, V.S. Sakharov and N.P. Yevfanov).^[20]. The will was challenged by his family in Scotland, and a legal battle was decided many years later at Britain's House of Lords where it was held that he had died intestate in relation to the current value (£70,000)^[12] on £50,000 invested in 1814 in British public funds, as naming a foreign power in one's will was illegal at that time.^[18][85][86] As he had no wife nor direct heirs, that money was subsequently shared among his wider family The money had been deposited with the intention of Wylie purchasing an estate in Scotland for his occasional use during his twilight years, and it had remained there after difficulty in finding a suitable estate and some change in his intentions.

[NB: Serfdom still existed across Russia when Wylie had written his will. An insight into Wylie's enlightened view on this practice is provided in his instructions for the sale of his properties which stated: "...also my property or estate situated ...in the districts of New Ladoga and Schlusselburgh, in different villages, with the peasants, (excepting those of my serfs who for their faithful and zealous service to my person shall be set free)".^[87]1] This enlightened view had also been demonstrated around 1806, when the tsar, hearing of a noble woman badly neglecting the sustenance and welfare of her serfs, had sent him to examine the situation and to accordingly. Following his inspection, Wylie sent for flour, wheat and wine to a great distance, causing her heavy expense said to have cured her of such cruel economy.]^[36][43]

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At the commencement of the 19th century, Russia had little in the way of an organised profession of medicine. Treatment for the Imperial Court, nobility and very senior army staff army was hired from abroad, and for the lower classes it was mainly in the hands of the clergy.^[27] Upon his recruitment into the army shortly after coming to Russia in 1790, Wylie had been shocked to discover that, unless asked to do so by the army's commander, doctors present at a battle were under no obligation to treat soldiers other than the senior army staff or nobles wealthy enough to have engaged them personally. In general, rank-and-file soldiers received no medical assistance of any kind, with lower ranks thus more likely to succumb to their wounds, infections and diseases. During this initial five years of army service, Wylie did treat rank-and-file soldiers, and he resolved to one day enforce this,^[88] as subsequently took place.

Excluding army medical care for a privileged few, Imperial Russia effectively had no system of battlefield medicine at this time.

Wylie's involvement army medicine administration began in 1804 when Tsar Alexander appointed him to the fairly restricted role of Medical Inspector of the Imperial Guard,^[17] this likely to have been the tsar's response to concerns developing in Russia that year about the stability of Europe posed by Napoleon.

When war commenced the next year, the tsar placed him on the field at the Battle of Wischau, directing all Russian medical services.

In March 1807, prior to the Battle of Friedland, the tsar appointed Wylie Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health, this within the Ministry of War, its name being changed around 1812 to Chief Army Medical Officer, this having oversight of the health of both the Army's combat units its administrative units. With it, Wylie now controlled provision of medical services for the entire Russian army.^[20]

Even prior to this appointment, at some time between December 1806 and February 1807,the tsar had already put him in charge of organising a military hospital for field forces about at Königsberg, this then employed in February 1807 to accommodate wounded soldiers from the Battle of Eylau about 15 miles away. The battle was extraordinarily bloody, with the hospital taking in 20,000 wounded, 17,000 of them Russians.

A key role of Wylie's 1807 appointment as Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health was for him to submit for the tsar's endorsement his recommendations for improving the provision of battlefield medical services. Wylie's work in this regard initially relied on his already fairly wide experience as an army doctor. As a regimental surgeon, Wylie had seen the inadequacy of the provision for care of the wounded, there being just one doctor, without any auxiliaries, catering for about 1,600 men. The absence of any official instructions left each army doctor to act on his own initiative and in accord with his own comfort.^[20] First-aid posts were never set up, this generally leading to hundreds of wounded being abandoned on the field.^[18] It had been the same most recently at Eylau where the Russian army had suffered huge losses. Clearly. It would have already have become apparent to Wylie that a complete reorganisation of the army's medical service was required.

Wylie's medical and managerial involvements with the army's medical service during these latter campaigns and his development of several organisational documents even in the difficult circumstances of battle, together with his work on the battlefields had also attracted the attention of Russia's allies Austria and Prussia who then applied Wylie's successful methods in their own armies medical corps, Wylie being requested by the Prussian government to travel there to advise them accordingly.^[20]

Wylie's work under this appointment was to be instrumental in his appointment, via an edict of June 1808, to Director Army Medical Department, Ministry of War.^[24] Another two British doctors were also appointed into equivalent positions there; for navy medicine and civilian medicine respectively.^[24] Wylie remained responsible for army medicine until 1836.^[23][24]

The term "Military Hospital" appears to have pertained to both the large military hospitals permanently in place in major cities such as Saint Petersburg and to "Mobile Hospitals", i.e., the small battalion infirmaries and the division, corps and headquarters hospitals established at a battle site, but appears not to have applied to the later-conceived "Temporary Military Hospitals" which were large hospitals set up at a comfortable distance from the anticipated battle sites.

With his 1807 appointment as Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health, Wylie set about improving the state of military hospitals which, according to his grandniece, were in a deplorable state at the time he had arrived in Russia. He found it difficult to convince people of the importance of light and ventilation and so he demonstrated this by placing plants in strategic positions, pointing out that those which died had faced north with little light. Hospitals started to be rebuilt according to his views and in l8l9 the military hospital in St Petersburg was described as follows: "The Military Hospital is a splendid establishment. It does the highest honour to the empire ...The cost per patient is little more than half of Civil Hospitals".^[18]

In parallel with improving the state of military hospitals, Wylie also managed both the redrafting of existing regulations about them and the creation of others. In 1808 he oversaw redrafting of the existing Hospitals General Regulations.

At some point in 1812, Wylie published his Regulations for the Delivery of Mobile Hospitals, this intended to set uniform standards for treating sick or wounded soldiers within the battlefield's battalion infirmaries and divisional, corps and headquarters hospitals.^[20]

As discussed, at some stage between December 1806 and February 1807 during Russia's 4th coalition battles, Wylie had been put in charge of setting up a military hospital for field forces at Königsberg nearby the conflict zone, this then employed in February 1807 to accommodate wounded soldiers from the Battle of Eylau about 15 miles away.

The concept behind this hospital became the template for establishing his "Temporary Military Hospitals" to serve in concert (as circumstances permitted) the battlefield infirmaries and the divisional, corps and headquarters hospitals.^[20]

In January 1812, with warfare on the horizon, Wylie established regulations pertaining to this type of hospital under the title "Temporary Military Hospitals Regulations".^[20]

In 1819, relevant instructions pertaining to all types of military hospitals were rewritten as "Military Medical Property Catalogues".^[20]

The tsar had received early warning indicating that Napoleon was planning to invade Russia during summertime in 1812, and accordingly had instructed this Ministry for War to urgently prepare for this.

The combination of Wylie's role from 1807 as Inspector General for the Army Medical Board of Health (its name changed around 1812 to Chief Army Medical Officer) and his role from 1812 as Director Army Medical Department, Ministry of War would have provided him with abundant authority to fully and rapidly push through preparations in Russia's military medicine for the oncoming war. In late 1811, his task was quantified to one of providing medical services for an army of 300,000, including no less than 500 doctors.^[20] Wylie was to oversee, inter alia, a total reorganisation of the army's medical supplies and the bringing of its medical services to a high state of efficiency, especially in regard to ensuring sufficiency in trained field surgeons and medics; medical instruments and medications; materials for the assembly of battlefield hospitals and his new "Temporary Hospitals"; ancillary army staff; and transport staff together with their carts and horses to transfer wounded soldiers to the battle-site hospitals and in due course to a Temporary Hospital further afield.

The Russian army war provide with those 500 doctors, most of them being graduates of Wylie's Military Medical Academy, in place by the time Napoleon's forces crossed the border into Russia.^[20] Overall, about 700 doctors would serve in the army by the time the invaders had perished or returned across the border.^[20] As was also the case in all of Imperial Russia's later military conflicts, the recruitment of military doctors was accelerated by graduating academy students ahead of schedule and also via actively recruiting doctors from private practice.^[89]

Over the 14-year period of Wylie's tenure as President between 1808 and 1822, the reorganized Military Medical Academy had graduated 762 students (654 physicians and 108 veterinarians), i.e., about 54 or 55 per year. Over the 14-year period of his tenure between 1824 and 1838 it graduated 677 medical trainees of all types, i.e., about 48 and 49 per year.^[90] If adjusted to take into account the diminution of the earlier period's rate due to the increased graduations being accounted over 14 years rather than the 19-month preparation that took place prior to Napoleon's1812, invasion, these data suggest a doubling in the academy's student graduations during those19 months.

Wylie had also arranged three backup field pharmacies, each having six month's supply for 100,000 men, and three mobile divisions that would follow armies.^[20] Because Napoleon's point of invasion was to remain uncertain to the tsar's Minister for War Barclay de Tolly until the day it occurred, his plan was to locate the army facing the invasion as separate detachments located from Latvia southwards into Russian Ukraine. Wylie accordingly located his backup field pharmacies at Pskov, Smolensk and Kiev.^[20]

Additionally, Wylie arranged for corps-level pharmacies that would each supply temporary field hospitals and regimental pharmacies with six month's supply.^[20] Sufficient lint and bandages were readied to cater for every fifth soldier, and regimental quartermasters were required to prepare linen bandages and compresses plus half a pound of lint for initial dressings to cover every sixth soldier.^[20]

As noted above, around 1812 Wylie had published Regulations About Delivery of Mobile Hospitals,^[20] this setting uniform standards for treating sick or wounded soldiers within the battalion infirmaries and divisional, corps and headquarters hospitals. covering, inter alia, their numbers and capacities. They were to be designed to cater for a battle incurring 15,000 wounded.^[20]

As also noted above, in January that year, Wylie had published Temporary Military Hospitals Regulations covering, inter alia, their numbers and capacities.^[20] Some 70 temporary hospitals had been established by 1812, and an echelon formation had been set to guide the disposition of each of the various types of hospital from the battlefield to the temporary hospitals.^[20] In outwards order, this arrangement was perhaps something like: (a) battlefield infirmaries; (b) divisional hospitals; (c) corps hospitals; (d) headquarters hospitals; (e) temporary hospitals.

Wylie went on to personally direct the Russian army's medical services in the major battles held within Russia at Vitebsk, Smolensk, Borodino, Tarutino, Maloyaroslavets, Vyasma and Krasnoi, and after hostilities resumed in early 1813, also in the major battles at Lützen, Bautzen, Dresden, Kulm, Leipzig, Hanau, Bar-sur-Aube, Arcis-sur-Aube, and Paris.^[20]

After battling its way across Germany during 1813, a much-weakened Russian army remained for seven weeks at the river Rhine border with France. This allowed time for Wylie, via huge feats of organisation, to get the army back to its full strength by returning from rear hospitals those wounded soldiers who had become sufficiently healed to rejoin their regiments, the number of these greatly boosted by the army's intendent-general having saved many lives with the idea of repurposing empty ammunition carts into makeshift horsedrawn ambulances that would assist removal of the injured from the battlefield.^[16]

During winter 1812 and all of 1813, typhus was very prevalent in the French army across Germany but it never occurred much within the Russian armies. It is unknown to what extent this disparity was due to rules established by Wylie that required Russian hospital staff to fumigate soldier's garments and then instruct them to take a bath. It would seem very likely.

The outcome of the pre-war efforts of the Medical Department of the Imperial Ministry of War was impressive. Russian military doctors had worked throughout this campaign as part of a coherent system to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield for recuperation or for surgery at field hospitals. This complex mechanism was set up by Wylie.

Years later (in November 1819), a state manifesto noted these comments that Wylie had included the in one of his reports about the 1812-1814 conflict: " ...military doctors shared labour and dangers with the military on battlefields and showed a good example of diligence and skill in the performance of their duties and won a fair gratitude of compatriots and respect from all our allies".^[20]

With the conclusion of the 1812-1814 campaign, Wylie was able to focus attention on developing further regulations. These dealt with peacetime hospitals and infirmaries, military doctors employed within the army corps staff, and the recruitment, ranking and promotion of military doctors.^[20]

Except for pauses due to: (a) Napoleon lingering at Moscow;^[41] (b) Field Marshall Kutuzov's reluctance to engage the French forces on the 1812 retreat;^[41] and (c) the mid-year truce in 1813;^[41] the prolonged 1812-1814 campaign was predominantly a high-attrition, constantly-shifting affair. The main forces of both armies were also forced to be stretched out for many kilometres along a sole narrow road during the campaign within Russia.^[41] In those circumstances, it would be surprising if Wylie had not found it difficult to make effective use of the army's field hospitals, particularly with respect to arranging ancillary medical staff (doctor assistants, male nurses, medical logistics staff and cart drivers. This was likely the motivation for his 1816 work: Regulations for Corps, Divisional and Regimental Hospitals. For each of the various hospital types, the regulations specified required numbers of doctors, doctor assistants, male nurses and logistical officers,^[18] thereby providing a pathway for enhancing hospital capability and functionality.

Around 1828, he also wrote an essay for Count Debich, Director of the Chief Headquarters: Principal Measures Preceeding and Accompanying the Formation of a Large Combatant Army,^[17] which soon became very relevant in Russia's 1828-29 war with Turkey.

Administratively, he followed this with Regulations Concerning Temporary Hospitals in the Field, subsequently included within the Code of Military Regulations.^[17]

During the 1828-1829 war with Turkey, the Russian army's medical services performed admirably in comparison to fifteen years earlier.^[20] This was achieved despite: (a) an inability to the pool the resources of the campaign's various Russian armies, these vastly-dispersed; (b) their enemy's execution of wounded prisoners;^[44] and (c) substantial challenges posed by terrain, climate, an unfamiliar type of warfare and, most prominently, the very high incidence of disease.^[44]

Wylie wasn't involved in the field this time, his role restricted to inspecting military hospitals in southern Russia where battle wounded would eventually arrive. But under the guidance of his deputies and instructions, the medical staff had shown zeal and assiduity in attending the wounded, be that on the battlefield or at one of the hospitals at the sieges of Brăila, Shumla and Varna.^[20]

The 1828 rescript awarding Wylie the Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky stated: " ...such a success could only be possible because of the excellent organisation of the military medical unit, extraordinary work, diligence and skilfulness of doctors ...".

In 1836 The British and Foreign Medical Review stated in regard to Wylie's contribution to the Russian army: "The common soldier has to thank Sir James Wylie for such care and protection as his predecessor in arms demanded in vain, and the army in general has to thank him for a real and effective, instead of an inefficient and nominal, medical staff".^[91]

That is not to say that this achievement was that of a lone foreigner. From early in his involvement in military and court medicine, Wylie had fostered the development of home-grown doctors, contributing, to their promotions and to their awards of orders, even Guiding one to become the first non-foreigner to serve as royal physician.^[20]

It was one of Wylie's outstanding achievements was that in every possible way he supported and advanced Russian doctors, meanwhile gaining their appreciation and respect.^[13] Later, once he could see that it had become possible for Russia to effectively train its own sons, he discontinued all recruitment of foreign doctors and surgeons into Russia's armed forces.^[11][92]

This growth in home-grown physicians together with their experience in battling the plague during Russia's 1828-29 war with Turkey proved to be beneficial during the cholera pandemic that passed from east to west through Russia between 1829 and 1832.^[20] For the first time without guidance by foreign doctors, they capably treated this disease and hindered its spread, meanwhile collecting data that would prove widely beneficial to doctors encountering a disease uncommon in Europe. [NB: Wylie had long believed that medical students needed good grounding in medical statistics. The benefits of his doing so were to be illustrated via Russia being among a minority of countries able to make a reliable record of cholera's eventual impact there.^[93]]

Saint Petersburg's Medico-Chirurgical Academy was created in 1798 from four existing training centres for army and fleet physicians.^[39] This new body was intended to be Russia's central institution for training its military physicians at a level comparable with the best abroad and have sufficient capacity to cater for all successful applicants.^[23]

Over the course of the 19th century, it was to become Russia's foremost medical training institutions.^[23] During the first half of the century, Wylie was to be the driving force behind this transformation.

It is unlikely to be coincidental that following Wylie's appointment on 20 June 1799 as Surgeon-in-Ordinary to Tsar Paul I, it was just 10 months later that the tsar issued a decree about new accommodation for the academy. It was to be relocated much nearer the Winter Palace, and 270,000 roubles was approved for its construction.^[20] Afterwards, the tsar was at pains to be provided with options for the building's organisational layout and interior arrangements, required that the building be of a capacity sufficient to accommodate the academy's students and set a deadline for lessons to commence there.^[20]

The new academy building, completed in September 1800, is a large and eye-catching, neoclassical-styled, 3-storey structure^[39] forming three sides of a spacious square. Later, Giuseppe Bernasconi (known for his work on the Winter Palace and elsewhere in Saint Petersburg), painted interior panels and decorated the main rooms, impressively within the academy's magnificent reception hall.^[39] The reception hall is circular and lit by a handsome cupola Around its base runs a gallery communicating on each side with two long, spacious rooms, these days containing the academy library. The building's design provided, across two stories, large rooms to serve as class rooms and smaller rooms intended to serve primarily as sitting and sleeping rooms for the students.^[95] In addition to the reception hall's many other functions, it also provides the perfect location for academy graduation ceremonies these days.

Initially included within the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the academy was transferred to the Ministry of Public Education in 1810, then to the Ministry of the Interior in 1822, only becoming part of the War Ministry in 1838.^[23]

The academy's original name "Medico-Chirurgical Academy" was altered in 1808 to "Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy" and altered again in 1881 to "Imperial Military Medical Academy". Then in 1934 it was altered to "S.M.Kirov Military Medical Academy" in honour of Sergei Kirov, First Secretary of Leningrad's city committee, who had been assassinated earlier that year.^[39] Since 2015 its name has been " "S.M. Kirov Military Medical Academy" of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation".

Initially, the academy struggled. It lacked clear and comprehensive rules about the structure and operation of its instructional role. The same applied to the academy's administration which at that point was done on an improvised basis.^[23] Relevant statutes concerning these matters did not exist until 1808.^[23]

For this, a recognized expert was recruited in 1805 as the academy's "Rector". This was Johann Peter Frank from Vienna, being highly regarded internationally as both a clinician and for organising medical systems.^[23] He subsequently presented a draft set of academy regulations to the Minister of the Interior, these then reviewed by the staff doctor for civil medicine, Wylie and the Minister of Public Education, with approval of them granted in December 1806.^[23]

After Wylie had been appointed Body Surgeon and Physician to Tsar Alexander in 1801, despite this lofty role, he nevertheless showed a strong interest in also teaching students at the academy. After obtaining permission from the academy's Council, he taught there on anatomy and instructed students in how to perform operations, using both cadavers and living patients.^[20] According to medical historian Chistovich, "there was seldom a day when Wylie did not visit the Central Hospital of the Land Corps and did not watch treatment of patients, especially surgical ones".

From this work, Wylie had quickly gained an appreciation of effective and ineffective teaching regimes occurring there as well as strong understanding of the academy's administration. On this basis, and having democratic views about the best distribution of power and authority within the organisation, he immediately set down some remarks on Franks' regulations and drafted his counter-proposal,^[23] this quite different to Franks',^[20] and he also suggested that a review of Franks' regulations be arranged by the academy's professors and assistant professors. Ignoring the suggestion of a review, the tsar immediately approved Wylie's counter- proposal^[23] and two days after Franks' regulations had received their approval, Alexander declared them invalid "because of intended changes due to some objections stated by body surgeon Wylie".^[23] Following consultations stretching over 19 months, Wylie's set of academy regulations was finally adopted on 28 July 1808.^[20] Just days later (1 August), and likely at the request of the tsar, Wylie was elected to head the academy^[39] under a new designation, "President". (Frank had kept his offices as teacher and the title of Rector before he returned to Vienna in March that year).^[23] Wylie was simultaneously also elected president of the academy's sister annex in Moscow, holding both positions until 1838.^[40]

At the same time, the tsar directed that members of the Academy be accorded the rights, liabilities, and benefits of a member of the Academy of Sciences.^[39]

Wylie's motives and manner when intervening about the regulations have been interpreted negatively by at least two medical historians.^[23][96] Frank's plan had also incorporated the academy's military purpose and character, but he aimed for it to be a university of strong scientific reputation. Nevertheless, Wylie's plan looked the better one in regard to both its content and in meeting Russia's needs during an era of continuous warfare, having the decisive tone of a military doctor rather than that of a detached academic.^[23] His coherent, streamlined regulations better suited the academy's need to rapidly transition to a reliable institution for supplying Russia's armed forces with uniformly trained physicians, especially ones trained in field surgery.^[23]

Based also on anticipated military necessity, he widened the academy's tasks and structure^[23] via:

• each of Human Medicine, Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine treated for the first time as separate fields of study
• instruction boosted to 24 full professors and 24 associate professors.^[23]

Taking in to account Russia's need to get well-trained doctors into the field as soon as possible, Wylie also rejected Latin as a language of instruction, requiring all lectures to be thereafter held exclusively in Russian.^[23]

Other changes implemented via Wylie's regulations were:^[23]

• the number of students to be on state allowance increased to 720
• young males from any background could apply if having sufficient general training to enable completion of the academic course
• where the applicant was a serf, he would gain his freedom after graduation and the standard six years of military service
• public awards to be provided for successful students

The teaching system was to be administered by a "Conference", chaired by the President, and consisting of full members of the academy, these being the professors and the secretary, in which case:^[23]

• adjunct instructors could attend meetings of the Conference but without voting rights
• applicants for a professorship were now required to perform a trial lecture to the Conference
• adjunct instructors were to be subject to a written and oral examination before their trial lecture
• professors were required to submit for Conference approval, and potential revision, all textbooks on which they intended to base their lectures

Unlike Franks' regulations, the rights of professors were not mentioned, just their duties, this being viewed a requisite of the times.^[23]

All of these matters involved greater expenditure, and the academy's annual upkeep rose from 170,000 roubles under Frank to 386,000 roubles under Wylie^[23] but proved important in improving the training of military doctors, veterinarians and pharmacists.^[20]

Finally, the regulations also set out:^[23]

• the academy's financial administration
• the curriculum within each of its three branches of study
• the examination arrangements
• academic honours
• the rights of the Academy, which was simultaneously granted the attribute "Imperial", it thereby renamed as the "Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy".

Much later (in 1835), Wylie would directly involve himself in publishing an updated set of academy regulations. They clarified the legal status of the academy's staff and students plus the academy's future roles.^[20]

In September 1811, with the aim of the academy becoming the centre of medical science in Russia, Wylie launched its journal, the "Global Journal of Medical Science".^[20] To get things started, each of the academy's professors was asked to prepare a detailed account of the current state of his subject, including its history to that point.^[20] Six issues of the journal were produced during its first year, then gradually fell away due to lack of subscribers.^[20] In January 1823, the journal was replaced by "Voenno-Meditsinskii Zhurnal" (Journal of Military Medicine), this becoming one of Russia's most significant journals, also with the distinction of being Russia's oldest peer-reviewed scientific journal.^[22] It is these days published monthly, since 1992 by the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation.^[97] It has become the official voice of both the academy and the Russian military medicine services.^[20]

Upon election as president of the academy, Wylie had been determined to make it a centre for fostering medical sciences and for raising the level of Russian medical education to equivalent that of advanced European countries.^[20]

He firstly wanted an academy that not only provided academic teaching of medical theory, but also had on-site clinics for students to practise their application of this. Separate clinics were established for each of surgical, eye and therapeutic treatments, each having the applicable operational zones and cabinets.^[20] In order for the academy administration to cater administratively with these clinics, he increased its 7 departments to 12. Also, no doubt guided by his strong interest in pharmaceuticals, he proposed that some botanic gardens be established there.^[20] The academy would also teach veterinary science and would maintain an anatomy museum.^[18]

Over the course of his presidency of the academy, there was a doubling of its departments and a significant increase in its funding.^[20]

From his first involvement with the academy, Wylie had soon become aware that apart from definitive essays in surgery and anatomy, the teaching of other subjects relied on either out of date translated manuals or a professor's hand-written notes.^[20] Commonly, a Russian translation of these manuals had never been done, in which case many of the teachers would simply read out the Latin or German languages within them.

Frome the time of his first with the academy, Wylie had been determined that the academy students be taught entirely in Russian, where possible via up-to-date teaching resources written also in Russian. His 1808 academy regulations had mandated instruction in Russian. In 1822 he also ordered the academic council to immediately commence translation of foreign manuals and prepare the academy's own Russian-language manuals for subjects where suitable foreign manuals did not exist.^[20]

Aware of the great benefits accruing to academy students from a thorough grounding in medical geography and medical statistics, Wylie suggested that, for each of the major pathogens, the applicable academy departments should routinely collect information on its prevalence and characteristics within each of Russia's individual geographic & ethnographic regions.^[20] The academy received significant funding for research papers in this area.^[20]

Combined, these improvements in the academy's theoretical and clinical instruction enabled its students to graduate with the formal degree of Physician, giving them with the right to practise medicine throughout Russia in either a civil or military capacity.^[20]

In 1819 a British visitor in Saint Petersburg for discussions with Tsar Alexander was taken by Wylie on tours of the academy and Saint Petersburg's main army hospitals. His very approving comments about them are included within a book published in 1846.^[48] These comments can be viewed within the "Lengthy statements, letters and orations" paragraph located at the end of this narrative.

A snapshot of day-to-day student life at the academy in 1828 is given in a detailed account written by a British doctor based on his journey across northern Europe and Russia during which he had inspected hospitals, most extensively at Saint Petersburg, viz:

There were 340 students across four groups: 200 studying Medicine & Surgery; 20 studying Pharmacy; 20 studying to be veterinary surgeons; and 100 studying to be assistant-veterinary surgeons.

Veterinary surgery appeared very important, a separate building provided for that purpose together with clinical stables, a cabinet of comparative anatomy and a reading room. When students were ill, they were sent to the applicable ward at a large soldiers' hospital close by the academy. The hospital made its clinical wards available for medical and surgical instruction of the academy's students.

Connected with the academy, but apart from the main building, there were collections of pathological and natural anatomy.

The scholastic year began in September, with one month allowed for taking a vacation, during which students were permitted to return home. Students rose at 6am in summer and 7am in winter, breakfasting in their own rooms. They attended lectures from 8am to 12 am, and again from 2pm to 7pm. On those occasions when a professor was unable to be present at the academy, one of the assistants would be called upon to deliver the applicable lecture. Excepting the assistant veterinary surgeons, who lived at a separate location, the students dined together at 12.30pm in a large refectory, at a simple but nourishing meal. Likewise, their supper. By nine o'clock at night, all candles had to be extinguished.

Other than frugal meals, the students wanted for little and they were treated kindly. Most were getting their medical education at government expense, being required afterwards to serve in the army for six years within a medical capacity, this usually at a distant part of the Empire. During that period of army service, they would receive 500 or 600 roubles per annum. The academy was open to fee-paying civilians, but few were taking this up.

The academy library consisted of two rooms, each 200 feet in length, with bookcase contents carefully ordered by subject. Students were admitted every Tuesday and Thursday from 5pm to 7pm. About 40,000 of the books contained in the library had been selected by order of Paul from the Warsaw Library and then presented to the Academy. However, the library's coverage was poor in memoirs and periodical publications, and above all, in modern books.

In assessing the degree of talent evinced at examination, professors would place examinees in one of the three ranks provided for army junior medical offices, within which they were required to wait, respectively, three, four, or six years to acquire the rank of Major.

Reflecting the academy's military purpose, discipline was very strict, repeat-offenders being placed into the army, ranked as Privates.

The academy currently provides military medical education for more than 5000 students within the following faculties: Governing medical staff; Training of doctors (for ground forces); Training of physicians (for the Air Force); Training of physicians (for the Navy); Training of doctors (military medical specialists); Postgraduate education; and Training and improvement of civil doctors

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List of published works

Between 1805 and 1808, he published four books at Saint Petersburg, his work on these facilitated by the year-long break between the hostilities within Austria and those within Poland:

1. Concerning American Yellow Fever (1805).^[17] St. Petersburg: Medical Printing House. In Russian.
2. A Brief Manual on the Most Important Surgical Operations (1806). St. Petersburg: Medical Printing House. In Russian.
3. Manual for Physicians Performing Recruit Selection. (1806, 2nd edn. 1810).^[17] Saint Petersburg. In Russian.
4. Pharmacopeia Castrensis Ruthena – transl. as Russian Military Pharmacopoeia (1808, later editions 1812, 1818, 1840).^[17] Saint Petersburg: Medical Printing House. Wylie's voluminous book, printed in Latin.

Much later, wartime distractions behind him, Wylie's greatly-enhanced experience in army medicine prompted books and essays by him that were of great practical importance.^[17] Published at Saint Petersburg, the books included:

1. Practical Recommendations Concerning Diseases (1828).^[17] In Russian.
2. Concerning Diseases Common in Hot Climates (1828).^[17] In Russian.
3. Practical Observations on the Plague (1829). Saint Petersburg. In Russian.
4. Infectious Diseases From the Point of View of Medicine and Police (1829). In Russian.
5. Practical Observations on Diseases Related to Tropical Climates (1829). St. Petersburg.^[23] His translation into Russian of the work in English by James Johnson An Essay on the Influence of Tropical Climates, More Especially the Climate of India on European Constitutions &c. published at London in 1813.
6. Practical Observations About Intermittent Fevers and Weakening Fevers (1829). St. Petersburg. In Russian.
7. Official Report to His Imperial Majesty on the Comparative Value of Therapeutic Methods Applied in the Military Hospitals and at Saint Petersburg to Subjects Struck with the Epidemic Disease Known as Cholera Morbus, with Practical Observations to the Nature of the Plague and What One Learns by Opening the Corpses (1831). St Petersburg. In French.
8. Description of the Conjunctivitis that Prevailed Among the Troops (1835). Saint Petersburg. In French.
9. A work on the surgical practices of the Russian army's medical staff (c. 1840).^[1] In Russian.

Context and content of the published works

Concerning American Yellow Fever was a small book dedicated to Tsar Alexander, written in Russian and primarily directed at military physicians. It stemmed from a request from the tsar to Wylie in 1805 asking him to prepare instruction for the prevention and cure of this disease in Russian soldiers stationed on the Greek islands who were badly exposed to it there.^[24] It gives a history of the disease plus a comprehensive account of its characteristics and symptoms, ways to prevent and treat it. It also notes where these characteristics, treatments and preventions differ to those of other diseases.^[17][24]

A Brief Manual on the Most Important Surgical Operations. This 100-page field surgery manual was the first of its kind published in Russia.^[17][18] The number printed included sufficient for a copy to be provided free-of-charge to every Russian military doctor, and "More than one generation of Russian military surgeons followed it and was raised on it".^[20] The manual included descriptions of the main surgeries conducted at military hospitals and listed the surgical instruments and associated items needing to be included within individual kit types to be supplied at the battalion corps, and headquarters levels.^[20]

A Manual for Physicians Performing Recruit Selection. Written in Latin, this work provides recommendations for evaluating recruits' fitness for miliary service. It lists the diseases, the physical and psychiatric illnesses and the deformities that can render recruits unfit for army service, and describes methods for their diagnosis. A separate section describes the detection of feigned diseases, especially relevant during annual conscription of recruits into a mandatory 25-year term of army service.^[41] Heavy demand for the manual necessitated the printing of a 2nd edition in 1810.^[20]

Pharmacopeia Castrensis Ruthena (transl. as Russian Military Pharmacopoeia) was intended primarily for use by military physicians and pharmacologists, but highly relevant beyond that sphere. Described by the Russian medical scholar Andrei Shabunin as: "a unique codification of the production, testing, storage and function of medicinal preparations".^[13] The 500-page work was so authoritative that it was reprinted in 1812, 1818 and 1840, each of these an expansion and improvement upon its forerunner. Being written Latin was at odds with Wylie's strong belief in writing for Russians in their own language, but perhaps he did so because much of the book's content had been compiled from existing material in that language). Nevertheless, it remained the standard military pharmacopoeia used within Russia until succeeded by a new Russian-language military pharmacopoeia in 1866.^[17]

Essays

In addition to Wylie’s published works, he also wrote essays in the Russian language directed at army and navy doctors about diseases confronting the Russian military during that era. These included:^[20]

1. The Use of Arsenic in Remittent Fever (1794).^[19] Written during Wylie's service with the Eletsky regiment.^[19]
2. About Scurvy (1824).
3. Method of Water Purification (1827).^[17] Published in The Military Medical Journal. In both text and drawings, Wylie described methods for purifying water in combat situations or when otherwise in the field.
4. Methods of Preserving Soldiers’ Health in Wartime (1828). Published in The Military Medical Journal, it provided advice about maintaining the health and steady state of mind among of soldiers when encamped or occupying trenches during a military campaign, giving particular reference therein to recently recruited soldiers.
5. Principal Measures Preceding and Accompanying the Formation of a Large Combatant Army (c. 1828).^[17] An essay written for Count Debich, Director of the Chief Headquarters, prior to the outbreak of conflict with Turkey over 1828 and 1829.

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Despite a portion of Wylie's estate being awarded to his relatives in Scotland, most (1.5 million roubles, about £100,000) remained at the disposal of Tsar Paul. The will advised as follows:

"...The money proceeds of the above, as also all my capital, which shall remain with me after my death in ready money and bank billets belonging to me, shall be divided into ten equal parts; two of them I desire to be employed in arranging for me a respectable funeral, and erecting a monument to me, and in such acts of charity to my memory as my executors shall think proper. Of the remaining eight parts I intend making afterwards detailed disposal; but if from any cause I shall have made no such disposal of the capital assigned for these eight parts or of any fractions thereof, then the sums which will thus remain undisposed of by me, I most humbly lay at the feet of His Imperial Majesty, my most gracious master, the Emperor of all the Russias, and I venture to express the wish that this sum may he employed in memory of my most august benefactors of blessed memory, the Emperor Paul Petrovitch [Tsar Paul I] and Alexander Pavlovitch [Tsar Alexander I] and the Grand Duke Michael Pavlovitch [Tsar Alexander's youngest brother], for some establishments of public or charitable benefit which shall bear my name ...".^[99]

In regard to the first special request in Wylie's will, it would have been either Nicholas Ist or Alexander 2nd who considered and approved the construction of a stature of him and for it to be placed outside the entrance of the Military Medical Academy.^[100]

The statue of was placed there in 1859. It was created via collaboration of architect Andrei Stakenschneider, sculptor David Jensen and rock master G. A. Balushkin.^[13] A life-size, bronze sculpture rests upon a massive stepped pedestal formed from a monolith of black Finland granite. Wylie is depicted in his doctor's military uniform bearing his medals while sitting on a cliff and reading a copy of his academy regulations, his pharmacopoeia laying at his feet. The corners of the pedestal feature four identical figures of Hygeia, Goddess of Health. The sides of the pedestal feature, in turn, a stone panel with a dedicatory inscription carved in gold lettering plus three bronze panels showing: (a) his baronet's coat of arms designed for him by Tsar Alexander I,^[60] (b) he presiding at a session of the academy's council, and (c) he and other doctors rendering aid to the injured on the battlefield.^[81][13]

The monument was inaugurated in a solemn ceremony held within the academy's great hall on 25 December 1859.^[100] That day was selected for being exactly 69 years since Wylie's entry into the Eletsky regiment.^[60][100] The ceremony was attended by ministers and principal staff of the various departments of state, and speeches were made in praise of Wylie's work as academy president and his military services, these followed by Wylie's executors presenting 1,000 roubles from his estate to be shared among the academy's needier students.^[60]

For 90 years the monument stood in its assigned place. Then in 1948 during Joseph Stalin's anti-cosmopolitan campaign with its dictum that foreign models were not to be unthinkingly emulated, the academy leadership was ordered to have the monument removed or perhaps even destroyed.^[81][13]

This decision was backed up with a smear campaign in which pliable soviet medical historians declared that Wylie had been an English spy. One of these even included within a published book some comments about Wylie: viz: he was never able to learn to speak Russian, was haughty and tolerated no criticism, surrounded himself with incompetent foreign careerists, oversaw a run-down in military medicine, drove Russian doctors out of his hospitals and had fierce quarrels with the renowned Russian surgeon N.I. Pirogov.^[101] All of this slander was being duly notified to readers of the local daily newspaper Leningradskaja Pravda (Leningrad Truth), a mouthpiece for the Soviet Union's communist party.^[81] Tellingly, the denunciation of Wylie had occurred just two years after Russia's Military Medical Encyclopaedic Dictionary had described him as "A man of great gifts and talents, a good surgeon, talented administrator and organiser who enjoyed great authority in the country".^[22]

Following Wylie's denunciation, a conference was held at the Military Medical Museum in Leningrad, Saint Petersburg's name between 1924 and 1991, chaired by academy head, the Nobel Prize nominee Leon Orbeli. The majority of conference participants rejected the denunciation, and in 1949, at huge personal risk for Orbeli, the monument was dismantled and for 14 years its separate parts were hidden, buried within wooden boxes. Reassembled in 1964 it was placed within the depths of the academy's park.^[81][13]

More drama ensued when two of the monument's bronze panels were stolen in 2002. Nothing was heard about them until August 2009 when news outlets reported on a badly damaged panel, that of Wylie chairing a session of the academy's conference, being recently purchased at a Saint Petersburg reception point for nonferrous metals, whereupon one of the purchasers, a metal artist, recognised its value and restored it personally then a few days later presented it to Saint Petersburg's State Museum of Urban Sculpture. From there it was returned home.^[102] The other stolen panel (that of Wylie and other doctors rendering aid to injured soldiers on the battlefield), is also now in place, having either been found or reconstructed.

In respect of the second special request within Wylie's will, that for any unexhausted money to be used to construct something of public or charitable benefit in his name,^[99] it would likewise have been either Nicholas Ist or Alexander 2nd who directed how this was to spent.

Following the inauguration of his statue in 1859, sufficient money remained in Wylie's estate to build a hospital beside his academy, this made available for clinical training of its students.^[18]

Opened in 1873,^[16] the hospital was built as a cluster of five three-story buildings assembled in his honour into the shape of a W. It provided 150 beds allocated as 40 each for surgical and medical services, 30 for gynaecological and obstetric services, and 20 each for ophthalmic services and diseases of children.^[104] Its W-shaped design was subsequently found to be beneficial, especially for sound insulation.^[18]

Until the October Revolution of 1917 the hospital was known as "Mikhailovskaya Baronet Wylie Clinical Hospital", memorialising Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich, brother of Tsar Alexander I, in line with the request in Wylie's will, but it remains obscure why the request to also memorialise tsars Paul I and Alexander I was not implemented. However, a few of those deeply knowledgeable about the Romanov families of this era have been known to make the very beginnings of a wry smile when queried why solely the Grand Duke was memorialised there.

As of 2014, the hospital housed clinics of the Military Medical Academy -- i.e. two Intermediate-level Therapy and Military Field Surgery Clinics and the Clinic for Child Diseases.^[20]

In a nod to Wylie's motto, the Military Medical Academy's present motto translates into Latin as "Labore et Scientia, Arte et Humanitates" i.e., By Work and Knowledge, with Art and Humanity.^[105]

On a wall within the academy hangs a stunning painting of Wylie in old age, sitting in a garden dressed in civilian clothing and surrounded by happy children.

Nearby, a large, horizontal, half-moon sheet of painted glass separating the top half of adjacent rooms shows a stylized head-and-shoulders image of Wylie in profile with a stylised image of the hospital's elegant frontage in the background. It is seen in mirror-image from the other side.

The surgical museum within the academy displays a bust of Wylie by the sculptor, conservator, educator and artist Igor V. Krestovsky (1893–1976), copies of several portraits of Wylie, some framed copies of documents about his work, and several information panels about him.

Wylie's gravesite in Saint Petersburg's Volkovo Lutheran Cemetery features a massive black sarcophagus placed upon a podium of granite flagstones. Its rear face features a modern (2014) enamelled photograph of a portrait of Wylie. On a polished white marble plate attached to the front face of the sarcophagus is carved the following inscription in English: "Sir James Wylie Baronet 1766–1854". The two sides of the sarcophagus each feature a large panel with relief inscriptions in Russian about Wylie's life and his services to Russia, these translating as:

• "Matters of administration and assistance to the suffering did not divert baronet Yakov Vasilyevich Villie from service to science: he wrote essays about yellow fever, plague, cholera, diseases typical of hot climates, a military pharmacopoeia, the management of operational surgery, the first in the Russian language, and he founded the first Russian medical journal, which is published to this day. Having warmly fallen in love with Russia and in his will naming it his second fatherland, he allotted his entire inheritance, more than a million roubles, for the benefit of medical education in Russia and for good works. Passed away 11 February 1854".^[23] [The journal was actually not the first medical journal in Russian, the first having been Sanktpeterburgskie Vradebnye Vedomosti (1792–1794). Wylie's date of death was based on the Julian Calendar used by Imperial Russia].

• "Baronet Jakov Vasil'evich Villie, doctor of medicine and surgery, physician-in-ordinary, actual privy councillor, born in 1768 in Scotland, moved after completion of medical training at the University of Edinburgh in 1790 into the Russian service as a physician in the Eletsky infantry regiment. He participated in the wars of 1805, 1807, 1812-1814 and 1826 and reached in his official career the positions of chief inspector of the medical professionals of the army and director of the medical affairs of the Court".^[23]

In 1809 Wylie purchased a 1739 home on the English Embankment (called in French at that time Promenade des Anglais), replacing it in the late 1820s with today's elegant palace.^[106] Located opposite the Bolshaya Neva River, it would have afforded him an attractive 20-minute walk along the riverbank to the Winter Palace and a further 30 minutes beyond there to the Military Medical Academy.

An information panel is now fixed upon its face. When translated, this states: "18th century architectural monument. House of Y.V. Villie (N.A. Demidova. A.F. Ghausha) built in 1737-1739 and rebuilt in the late 1820s. Protected by the state".

At a ceremony held in 2004 at High Street in Wylie's home town Kincardine-on-Forth, a plaque was unveiled to celebrate the memory of Wylie, one of the town's most distinguished sons. It states: "Sir James Wylie, Bart. Born Kincardine 1768 – A pioneering medical Scot – Honoured by Russia, Britain, France and Prussia – Founder of the Medico-Chirurgical Academy of St Petersburg where his generous bequest endowed a clinic – Died St Petersburg 1854. Labore et Scientia by Work and Knowledge – Erected by Kincardine Community Council".^[92][108]

Wylie is briefly mentioned as a minor character at the Battle of Borodino in Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace.^[92] He is included in one or two of the novel's English-language translations, where he is named as "Villier", the anglicised form of the Russian "Villiye".^[24]

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The general admiration of him among men of science

Wylie's government roles, honours and memberships are well summarised in a dedication to him given in a mineralogical book published by Gotthelf Fischer at Moscow in 1816.^[109] The author spent most of his adult life in Russia, in 1837 becoming President of the Moscow branch of the Military Medical Academy.^[110] This dedication reflects a general admiration of Wylie among men of science within that country.

Medal for 50 years of service to Russian medicine: 1840

In 1840, Wylie received a striking 64mm diameter gold medal for his 50 Years of service to Russian medicine together with a dazzling silver vase made specially for him.^[20]

The obverse side of the medal has a bust of him together with his name and the titles of his principal roles stated in Russian around the rim. The reverse side has twelve lines of Latin, the translation stating: "To the most distinguished gentleman under the auspices of the triumphant Emperor. Dedicated to the most outstanding gentleman in the field of Medicine in Russia exercising the healing art for fifty years. Respectfully the doctors of Russia congratulate him at St Petersburg 9-12-1840".

The medal was presented to him by Grand Duke Michael at a jubilee held in his honour at Saint Petersburg in December 1840,^{[20][111][112]} about 50 years after Wylie had commenced with the Eletsky regiment. Translated, a French description of the event reading as: " ...details of the half-century jubilee of doctor James William Baron Wylie, doctor and privy councillor to the emperor, grand cross of several orders, etc. All of the most distinguished within Russia were associated with this festival. From the early morning a great number of people had gathered in Mr. Wylie's house; at ten o'clock, the members in charge of the provisions of the festival presented their congratulations to the honourable doctor and invited him to a banquet ...the heir grand-duke Alexander Nicolavitsch condescended to go in person to the illustrious old man to congratulate him. At a quarter hour past mid-day the banquet room began to fill with those who had been invited, among whom could be found the grand-duke Michael, the ambassador of England, Lord Klanricard, field-marshal prince de Varsovie, prince Volkonsky, minister for the court, the minister for war count Tchernicheff, the vice-chancellor of the empire count de Nesselrode, the minister of the interior, count Strogonoff, the minister for justice, count Panin, the director-general of communication, count Toll, the controller of the empire Chitrovo, the marshal of the nobility, the grand-equerry, prince Dolgorouki, Blondoff, president of the department of the laws of the council of the empire, the auditor-general, prince Schackousky, general of the general staff of the Russian armies, count de Kleinmichael. At half past four doctor Wylie appeared. The minister for war complimented him in the most flattering terms, and on behalf of the emperor presented him with the grand cross of the order of St. Vladimir, whose star and ribbon were placed on the doctor by grand-duke Michael. At the end of the meal, which was the most brilliant, they presented to Baron Wylie a silver vase of very great value and an immense gold medal, struck in his honour.^[111][112]

The Order of Saint Vladimir received by him was his third, this one being of the 1st class. A marble pedestal was included with the silver vase presented at the jubilee, both of these subsequently bequeathed by Wylie to the Military Medical Academy.^[12] Some copies of the medal were later minted in bronze.

1840 Chronological listing of awards and honours

Russian Empire:

• Silver medal from Catherine the Great (c. 1792-1794).^[15]
• Court Councillor (1798).^[13]
• Diamond ring with monogram of Tsar Alexander (1804).
• Order of Saint Vladimir, 4th degree (1804).
• Order of Saint Vladimir, 2nd degree (1807).^[37]
• Diamond ring from the Queen of Prussia for having cured her (1807).^[15]
• Actual State Councillor (1814)^[20]
• Honorary member of Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences (1814).^[113][114]
• A diamond box from the family of Joséphine de Beauharnais (1814).^[15]
• Order of Saint Anna, 1st degree (1814, with diamond badges granted 1821).^[109]
• Diploma of Nobility of the Russian Empire, Baronetcy, and Coat of Arms (approval: 1816, 1824, 1844 & 1847).^[66][68]
• Snuffbox with diamonds and monogram of Tsar Nicholas I (1826).^[76]
• Same snuffbox with enamelled portrait of Tsar Nicholas I (1828).
• Decoration: For Impeccable Service for 35 years (1828).
• Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky 3rd degree (1828, with diamond badge granted 1838).^[23][78]
• Decoration: For Impeccable Service for 40 years (1834).
• Gold medal and valuable silver vase for 50 years' service to Russian medicine (1840).^[20]
• Order of Saint Vladimir, 1st degree (1840).^[23]
• Actual Privy Councillor (1841).^[20]

Austria: Commander, Order of Leopold.^[23]

Bavaria: Commander, Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown.

France: Chevalier Legion d'honneur (1814).^[55]

Prussia: Order of the Red Eagle, 2nd class (1813)^[23] and Order of the Red Eagle, 1st class (1835).

United Kingdom: Knighthood (10 June 1814), Baronetcy (2 July 1814), Coat of Arms designed by Alexander.^[23]

United States: International member, of the American Philosophical Society.^[115]

Württemberg: Commander, Order of the Crown (1818).^[109]