Following a humiliating defeat in the Crimean War, the Russian Empire found herself exposed due to major deficiencies in her infrastructure. To gain from European scientific, technical and educational advancements, the Russian Government began to permit studies abroad and relaxed censorship, which brought a new flood of literature into the country. These measures enormously facilitated the growth of Russian science, medicine and education in the late nineteenth century, taking the Empire into a fascinating era of laboratory research, a new cultural and intellectual tradition. The Imperial...