Abstract
Histories of courtly science and medicine primarily deal with activities and events confined within the walls of the palace. In contrast, this paper highlights the interactions of court medicine with developments outside of the palace, by focusing on the case of the early modern Russian court medical department, which had a wide-range of extra-courtly duties. Western European medical practitioners working at the Russian court maintained contacts with other courts, were involved in military medicine, conducted plague autopsies, regulated the medical market, provided expert testimony in witchcraft trials, and wrote self-help medical texts for a wide range of Russians. The Russian court was not unique: in each of these areas, Russia echoed developments elsewhere in Europe. The uniqueness of the Russian case is rather in the huge breadth of these activities, making Russian court medicine a major part of early modern Russia’s medical world.