Background
Nikolay Nikolayevich Bazhenov was born on the 11th of August, 1857 into the family of nobility.
Nikolay Nikolayevich Bazhenov was born on the 11th of August, 1857 into the family of nobility.
In 1881 Nikolay Nikolayevich graduated from the Medical Faculty of Moscow University.
Since 1885 Nikolay Bazhenov organized psychiatric care and construction of psychiatric hospitals in Ryazan' and Moscow and was the director of the Ryazan’ Psychiatric Hospital in 1886-1889.
In 1894 Bazhenov defended his doctor’s thesis on significance of autointoxication in the pathogenisis of nervous syndromes. During his scientific career he specialised in metabolic processes in the course of nervous and mental diseases and studied creativity process and its pathological deviations.
Bazhenov is known for reorganizing psychiatric hospital care and regime and introduce of home care for psychiatric patients in Russia. Since 1889 he was the head of the Psychiatric Department of the provincial territorial hospital and at the same time headed the Voronezh Medical Society (1898-1901). He extended and equipped Voronezh former local government authority Psychiatric Hospital. A new provincial territorial psychiatric hospital was built in the village of Orlovka in the Voronezh District with his participation and Bazhenov became its first director.
Since 1901 Bazhenov was on a work trip abroad. Together with I. I. Mechnikov, F. F. Erisman and others he participated in the creation of the Russian Higher School of Social Sciences in Paris in 1901.
Since 1904 he was the chief physician of the Preobrazhenskoye Psychiatric Hospital, Moscow. In 1904 Bazhenov was also one of the organizers of the medical faculty of the Moscow Higher Women's Courses (where he was the head of the Psychiatric Department in (1906-1916) and the Literary and Art Club in Moscow (together with A. P. Chekhov, K. S. Stanislavsky, A. F. Koni).
In 1905 Nikolay Bazhenov was awarded the National Order of the Legion of Honour.
He is considered to be one of the initiators of the revival of Russian Freemasonry and he was also the head of the Masonic Lodge "Astrea" (Moscow, 1906-1911).
He became the first Chairman of the Russian Union of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists (1911—1916).
In 1916 Bazhenov attached to the Russian Expeditionary Corps in France and Salonika. A bit later he became the Autorised Representative of the Russian Red Cross Society in Paris (1917-1923).
Author of more than 125 scientific works on general psychopathology, history of psychiatry, schizophrenia, criminal anthropology and other works, including such books as Psychiatric Conversations on Literary and Social Topics (Moscow, 1903), Draft Legislation on the Mentally Ill and an Explanatory Note to It" (Moscow, 1911) in defence of the mentall patients' rights.
It is known that Bazhenov corresponded with Sigmund Freud.
In 1923, while he was in Belgium, Bazhenov fell serviously ill and returned to Moscow.
Nikolay Nikolayevich Bazhenov thought that кeligious moral codes pervert people outside their group as less moral. Thus, religion is socially divisive and its effect is harmful for society.
Nikolay Nikolayevich Bazhenov thought that individuals have rights to express freedom if it safeguarde the interests of a collective.