An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

ALTUKHOV, Nikolai

1 entries
  • 7243

Entsefalometriya mozga cheloveka v otnoshenii k polu, vozrastu i cherepnomu ukazatelyu [in Cyrillic].

Moscow: Izdatelstvo Moscovskogo Universiteta, 1891.

In 1889, nearly 20 years before Horsley and Clarke published their paper on the use of stereotaxy to examine the brain, Dmitrii Zernov, a professor of anatomy at Moscow University, invented the first prototype of a stereotaxic instrument, an arc-based device for cerebral mapping that he called an encephalometer. Zernov briefly described this device in  preliminary communication published in the Russian journal Trudy Fiziko-meditsynskogo Obshestva Moscovskogo Universiteta (Vol. 2 [1889]: 70-80).

Two years later Zernov’s student Nikolai Altukhov provided a complete description of the encephalomete, including six detailed projection maps based on 40 post-mortem examinations. “Projections of anterior and posterior parts of the corpus callosum, insula and some basal ganglia (thalamus, nucleus lenticularis and caput nuclei caudate) were localized on the surface of the head. [Altukhov] also noted similarity in female and pediatric brains and concluded that the former are underdeveloped” (Lichterman, p. 3). Since both Zernov and Altukhov’s papers were published only in Russian, Western scientists did not learn of Zernov’s encephalometer until much later. Lichterman, “The first instrument for cerebral mapping: Zernov’s encephalometer and its modifications,” Kopf Carrier no. 61 (April 2005): 1-5.



Subjects: COUNTRIES, CONTINENTS AND REGIONS › Russia, Cartography, Medical & Biological, INSTRUMENTS & TECHNOLOGIES › Surgical Instruments › Stereotactic Surgery, NEUROSURGERY › Stereotactic Neurosurgery