The history of the Department of Vertebrate Physiology and Pharmacology in Key facts & figures

The history of the Department of Vertebrate Physiology and Pharmacology, which was established on 1 July 2024, should be presented as separate historical sketches of the Department of Animal Physiology and the Department of Pharmacology.

The development of physiology at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine began with the Department of Physiology of Farm Animals, established at the Veterinary Faculty of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, which was organised on 27 September 1920 by decision of the Higher Education Administration.

The organiser and first head of the Department of Physiology of Farm Animals was a world-renowned scientist, an outstanding Ukrainian physiologist, a student of Academician I. P. Pavlov, one of the founders of electrophysiology, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1939), Doctor of Medicine, Professor Vasyl Yuriyovych Chagovets.

The Department of Pharmacology was established at the Kyiv Veterinary Institute in 1922. It was headed by medical pharmacologists (Professors Shkavera G.L., Rodionov P.V.) or specialists in other fields (Professors Yaroslav S.Yu., Vashetko M.P.), who also taught the course in pharmacology. After the evacuation of the institute (September 1941) to the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), senior lecturer and later (from 1942) candidate of veterinary sciences Sergey Vasilyevich Bazhenov became the head of two independent departments – pharmacology and toxicology. After returning to Kyiv in 1948, the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology was established, headed by Associate Professor Bazhenov S.V. until its merger with the Department of Pathophysiology (1957) under the leadership of Professor Vashetko M.P. In 1959, the departments were reorganised again, resulting in the Department of Pharmacology, Pathophysiology and Parasitology, headed by Professor Bazhenov S.V. until 1979.