Number 74 English Embankment is an old house in the Russian classical style where a remarkable Scottish doctor lived.
From the outside, the house seems unremarkable for such a remarkable man. But its owner Sir James Wylie was physician to three tsars: Paul I, Alexander I and Nicholas I.
So how did the apprentice of a Scottish General Practitioner end up as the top doctor in Imperial Russia? It still remains a mystery why a successful medical student from the University of Edinburgh suddenly gave up his studies and traveled so far from home.
Born in 1768 at the sea-port of Kincardine-On-Forth in Scotland, James Wylie came from a large family with older and younger brothers. His parents, William and Janet Wylie were far from wealthy but they wanted at least one of their sons to get a university education.
James Wylie began his medical studies as an apprentice of the local GP and in 1786 entered the Medical Faculty of the University of Edinburgh. He studied there for four years but never graduated. Instead he left for Russia for good.
According to legend the young doctor had been involved in sheep rustling and, in order to escape punishment, escaped in a hay cart and then onto a ship.
Other factors probably influenced his decision. Doctors were scarce in 18th century Russia and here was an excellent career opportunity. Most doctors in Russia were foreigners and some of them were from Scotland.
Even without his degree, Wylie passed an examination securing him a job in the Eletsky Regiment of the Russian Army. He achieved a senior rank and then moved to Moscow.
During his first five years in the new country, James Wylie devoted much of his time to medical research and even wrote a paper on Yellow Fever in Russian. His research was not in vain and on December 22, 1794, Kings College, Aberdeen gave him a degree as Doctor of Medicine which enhanced his professional prestige.
Soon, another medical doctor from Scotland, Dr Rogerson, who was in touch with court circles, recommended James Wylie as a surgeon at the imperial court in St Petersburg.
Sir James Wylie tends the wounded at Boradino.
In 1798 Wylie saved the life of one of the courtiers who was on the point of suffocating because of a large abscess on his neck. Tsar Paul I was so delighted by his skills that he appointed him his personal doctor. James Wylie became indispensable to the tsar and accompanied him on his journeys.
On the night of March 11, 1801, Paul I died in his residence, the Mikhailovsky Zamok -- later called the Engineers' Castle. Most people knew he had been strangled by a group of disenchanted and disgruntled officers who had burst into his bedroom in a drunken orgy.
Yet James Wylie issued an official medical certificate which stated the tsar had died of a stroke. Some people mocked Wylie's certificate saying that "apoplexy was nothing but murder." But the doctor's prestige ensured his reappointment in the service of the new Tsar Alexander I.
It was during his reign that Wylie did a lot of work, not only as the attending physician to the tsar, but also as the President of the Medico-Surgical Academy (now the Military Medical Academy) in St Petersburg and contributed significantly to the development of that institution and the construction of its new building in Ulitsa Lebedeva.
It was also during the reign of Alexander I that James Wylie, also appointed to the post Inspector of the General Army, participated in the war against Napoleon. During the Battle of Borodino, in the heat of the battle, he himself performed at least 200 surgical operations trying to save the wounded and dying.
After the victory over Napoleon, together with Tsar Alexander I, James Wylie came to Great Britain. At the request of the tsar, he was knighted and later on received the higher dignity of a baronetcy.
By the early 1820s, Sir James Wylie had not only the established reputation of a highly skilled physician, but also a considerable wealth. He had his luxury house on the English Embankment but preferred to live in his apartment in the Winter Palace -- the residence of the tsar.
Sir James Wylie never got married and, according to rumors, hated women and was too greedy to spend his money in helping to support his family back in England.
Some of these rumors were mentioned in the book "Travels in Russia" by Robert Lyall who wrote, "He lives in a most economical manner and seldom or never pays for a dinner. If obliged to remain at home, soldier-like he makes his repast of black bread and salt. But in general he goes without invitation to some acquaintance either in the palace or in the city and dines en famille, agreeably to the custom of the country."
In 1825, in spite of Wylie's skills, Alexander I died in Taranrog. Again rumors accused him of issuing a false medical certificate on the tsar's death. Several decades after the death of Alexander I, many people were convinced that the tsar didn't die at all, that somebody else was buried instead of him, and the real tsar became a monk in one of the Russian monasteries and was still alive in the 1850s.
Meanwhile a new tsar -- Nicholas I -- had ascended the throne and James Wylie continued on in his post as tsar's physician. He had gained a unique place at the court along with social, political and personal power which he held onto until his death.
The grey marble statue of James Wylie by sculptor
David Jensen, 1859.
James Wylie died on December 2, 1854 and was buried in Volkovo Protestant Cemetery where his tomb can still be seen. He left almost all of his wealth towards the construction of a clinical hospital in St Petersburg.
This hospital, well-known as the James Wylie Clinical Hospital (now part of the Military Medical Academy) is at 5 Bolshoi Sampsonievsky Prospect. It was designed by Konstantin Sokolov and was built between 1865-1873.
Behind the building you can see a life-size statue of Sir James Wylie in grey marble, which although damaged by local hooligans, still looks impressive.
Unveiled in 1859, it was originally in front of the main Military Medical Academy on Lebedeva Street but in the 1940s Stalin had it removed in his campaign against "cosmopolites" and Sir James Wylie was declared to be a British spy and a Soviet medical historian even tried to prove this absurd idea.
So the monument to Russia's most famous doctor was removed where few could see it. Yet it survived and stands today as a fitting tribute to the man who served three tsars.