Darwin Correspondence Project

Russian–French physiologist, journalist, and political agent. Born Ilya Fadeyevich Tsion. Studied at Warsaw and Kiev (MD 1864), Berlin, 1865, the Military Medical-Surgical Academy, St Petersburg, 1867, Leipzig, and Paris. Director of the university physiological laboratory, St Petersburg, 1868; professor of anatomy, 1870. Professor of physiology and chairman of the Medical–Surgical Academy of St Petersburg, 1873. Sent by the Russian government on a research trip to Leipzig, where he wrote a handbook on physiological experimentation and vivisection, published in 1876. Made a privy councillor by Alexander II. Added ‘de’ to his name when he returned to Paris in late 1875 as an agent of the imperial Russian government. Worked for Claude Bernard. Editor of Le Gaulois, 1881; also wrote for La nouvelle revue and Russky vestnik.