Biography
Lapinsky was born on November 5, 1862 in the wealthy family of a college assessor in the village Smolygivka, province of Chernigov, northern Ukraine. He graduated from the Chernigov Gymnasium with a silver medal in 1881 and from the medical faculty of St. Volodymyr University in Kiev with honors in 1891. In 1893, he remained at the university to prepare for a professorship under the mentorship of Ivan Sikorsky. He interned at the Charité clinic in Berlin and studied under the renowned psychiatrist Friedrich von Jolly. In 1897, he defended his doctoral dissertation titled "On Vascular Diseases in Afflictions of Primary Nerve Trunks or Peripheral Nerves." Afterward, he received a two-year assignment to study with leading German psychiatrists and neurologists.
In 1899, he was permitted to lecture at Kiev University as a privatdozent. He combined teaching with clinical practice at the university's clinic for nervous and mental diseases, serving as a resident and assistant. In 1901, he acquired the mansion of Baron Steingel [ru] on Bulvarno-Kudryavskaya Street, where he established a physiotherapeutic sanatorium with a hydrotherapy facility, implementing his own methods of hydrotherapy.
In 1904, he was appointed extraordinary professor, and in 1908, full professor of psychiatry and neuropathology at Kiev University, a position he held until 1918. Lapinsky became the first head of the Department of Nervous Diseases at the Medical Faculty of the University of St. Volodymyr in Kyiv. During academic breaks, he regularly visited Berlin and Paris on assignments (1907–1914). In 1910, he participated in the International Congress on Radiology and Electricity in Brussels.
Besides his work at Kiev University, he taught at the Samaritan Women's Courses and the Women's Medical Courses, and headed the neurology department at the City Hospital of Tsarevich Alexander. He also served as deputy chairman of the Psychiatric Society at Kiev University (from 1912) and chairman of the Physical-Medical Society. He was an active member of the Kiev Club of Russian Nationalists.
Lapinsky taught at the University of Kyiv at the time when Mikhail Bulgakov was studying there. Some saw the prototype of Doctor Stravinsky from The Master and Margarita in the figure of Professor Lapinsky.
In 1919, he emigrated to Yugoslavia and settled in Zagreb. The University of Zagreb School of Medicine invited him to organize a department and clinic for nervous and mental diseases in 1920. In February 1921, he was appointed professor of this department. He retired in 1928, and was named professor emeritus and the interim lead of the clinic. His assistants Josip Breitenfeld, Đuro Vranešić and Viktor Ostrovidov took over the day-to-day running of the Clinic. He left for Belgrade in 1930 where he joined the University of Belgrade School of Medicine. In 1931 he joined the Russian Red Cross Clinic, before leaving for Argentina in 1934.
While in exile, he published in the journal "Notes of the Russian Scientific Institute in Belgrade" (1918–1937) and contributed several scientific reports to Soviet medical journals. He authored over 150 works on experimental and clinical neuropathology, including publications in French and German. He maintained connections with the German psychiatrist and neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer, and Soviet neurologists Grigory Rossolimo and Vladimir Bekhterev.
Michael Lapinsky died in 1947 in Argentina.
Family
Their son, Nikita Mikhailovich Lapinsky, was born in 1901, according to the metric book of the Sretenskaya Church in Kiev. His godparents were hereditary honorary citizen Grigory Mikhailovich Minaev and noblewoman Maria Mikhailovna Lapinskaya. At the time of his son's birth, M. N. Lapinsky was recorded in the metric book as a doctor of medicine and privatdozent at St. Vladimir University.
Their daughter, Anna Mikhailovna Lapinskaya (1900–1989), married Alexander Kugushev [ru]. Her husband, Alexander Alexandrovich Kugushev (1898–1935), was the son of the Ufa governor and noble leader Alexander Alexandrovich (1862–1919) and nephew of Viatcheslav Kugushev [ru]. After 1917, the family emigrated to France. Following her husband's suicide, Anna Mikhailovna moved with her son Alexander Kugushev (born 1931) to her father's residence in Yugoslavia, later living in Austria, Argentina and eventually in Menlo Park, California.
Russian Empire
Yugoslavia
Order of Saint Vladimir, 4th class
Order of Saint Anna, 2nd class
Order of Saint Stanislaus, 2nd class