Nikolai Pirogov, a native Muscovite and a graduate of the medical faculty of Moscow University, became famous primarily as a professor at the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy, a field surgeon and a participant in the defense of Sevastopol. For contemporaries, he was an example of nobility and selflessness, and it was these qualities that he himself considered obligatory for a real doctor.The biographical facts provided are supported by quotations from the diaries, letters and documents of the protagonist, as well as from an extensive corpus of letters and memoirs of people from his environment. And it is they who give liveliness and volume to the textbook personality.A detailed and conscientious study of the biography of the great Russian doctor was carried out - a century later - by Professor of the Military Medical Academy A. S. Kiselev.