The post-reform decades in imperial Russia witnessed an unprecedented expansion of schooling and the growing involvement of medical professionals in the school life. This article studies medical inspection and the activity of school
doctors at Moscow municipal elementary schools between 1889 and 1914. The institutionalization of the school medical control was motivated by sanitary concerns and articulated through the language of hygiene. The article shows that school doctors performed a systematic, highly-valued and well-paid work and influenced legal norms and policy on the city level. It argues that school hygiene was one of the instruments of constructing a “non-coercive classroom” and promoting a more inclusive, fair and humane social policy in imperial Russia.