The Kyiv school of comparative morphologists

Abstract

The article presents information about the scientific activities of individual representatives of Kyiv School of Comparative Morphology of Ukraine founded in 1924. The school was founded by B. O. Dombrovsky, whose ideas live on in the walls of the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Pathomorphology of Animals named after V. G. Kasyanenko which is more than 100 years old. He proposed an anatomy course based on cadaveric material (dissection), laid the foundations for an educational museum and comparative anatomical research not only among teachers but also among students. B. O. Dombrowski and his students worked on the construction of integral (holistic) anatomy and made generalizations about the respiratory, reproductive, vascular and nervous systems of vertebrates and invertebrates. The materials were published in five monographs. Particularly, valuable was his generalization of the stages of development of morphological thinking in which he defines five stages of development of biological thinking. In the evolutionary aspect, B. O. Dombrovsky and his students studied the biomorphology of the vertebrate respiratory system, considering it in connection with the conditions of the environment, the nature of locomotion and the way of feeding. This made it possible to trace the development of hypoxic muscles and lungs among vertebrates to reveal the dependence of their structure on the nature of respiratory motility, to determine the types of respiration, to establish the concept of alveolar respiration and to reveal the dependence on the species and constitution of animals.

Dombrovsky's successor was V. Kasyanenko who graduated from  Kyiv Veterinary and Zootechnical Institute (1926) and worked as a laboratory assistant at the Department of Anatomy. He was enrolled as an assistant at the department headed by B.O. Dombrovsky. Like his teacher, he knew German and published five articles (1927-1929) in the most famous journals of the world. While working at the Institute of Zoology, he formed the Department of Comparative Anatomy (1950) in which he adhered to B. O. Dombrowsky's principles and launched a new scientific field of research - comparative anatomical and functional analysis of the locomotor apparatus. During the period of the Department's work (1963-1980), ten Doctors of Sciences and 18 Candidates of Sciences were trained.

Honored Worker of Higher School of the Ukrainian SSR, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor G. O. Himmelreich is well known to a wide range of scientists and workers not only in the field of veterinary medicine, humane medicine, biology and zoology of Ukraine but also specialists from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. As a result of a wide and thorough morpho-functional study of the pharynx, G. O. Himmelreich created a new understanding phylogenetic development of the entire anterior part of the digestive apparatus. Based on his own data, he proposed a different interpretation of the boundaries of the mammalian pharynx, its sections and the structure and function of its muscular apparatus.

Studying the hyoid apparatus, Professor Rudyk not only established the peculiarities of the structure of the hyoid apparatus inherent in different species but also found out the history of its development and causation. At the same time, the habitat and lifestyle of the animals were studied. In addition to conventional anatomical methods (dissection, measurements, etc.), he used methods of material resistance: understanding the plane moment in mammalian bones, as well as bending tests.