Samuel Collins (physician)

Samuel Collins (1619 in Braintree – 26 October 1670 in Paris;Samuel Collins I in Russian bibliography, see disambiguation) was a British doctor and author. Collins was a personal physician to Alexis I of Russia in 1659–1666 and the author of The Present State of Russia printed in London in 1667.

Born to a vicar in Braintree, Samuel Collins entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in 1635 but for some reason took no degree at the university. Presumably, he pursued medical career in Padua where he graduated M.D; in 1659 his diploma was recognized by Oxford University. In 1659 or 1660 Collins was approached by John Hedben, one of several men in Russian employ assigned the task of recruiting skilled Europeans for service at the court of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich. Collins accepted the proposal and shortly moved to Moscow. He remained in the capital for nine years as personal physician to Tsar Aleksei. Collins practiced such remedies as Deer horns, Moose hoofs and Hare hair (Latin: Cor.cervi, ungul.Al., pil. Lepor), apparently with success. Collins resigned from Russian service 28 June 1666 with honours and a generous pay and immediately left for England. There he compiled his notes on life in Muscovy into The Present State of Russia, in a Letter to a Friend in London. Collins declared that he deliberately had not used any written sources, pretending that no man of his intelligence and capabilities has ever traveled to Moscow. Modern analysis corroborated this claim.

The first English edition of The Present State of Russia was released in 1667 and reissued in 1668, 1671 and 1698. Collins, according to a cenotaph in Braintree, died "taking a journey into France" on 26 October 1670 in Paris. The French edition was printed anonymously in 1679; the German translation in 1929. The first Russian edition, translated by Pyotr Kireyevsky from a French print, was published in 1828 (excerpts) and 1841 (complete text); in 1846 Kireyevsky published a translation of an English original. The book was regularly reprinted since.

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