The article presents how, against the background of the devastating cholera epidemics that swept away in Russia in 1830-1831, according to incomplete data, almost 200,000 lives, and in 1848-1849 much more, sanitary and anti-epidemic measures were taken in the educational institutions of the Ministry of Public Education. A feature of St. Petersburg University and the Main Pedagogical Institute was the residence of a large number of state students in the building of the Twelve Colleges and other buildings. The usual sanitary measures developed by that time by the administration of educational institutions on the recommendations of physicians, as well as special anti-cholera measures, which included daily monitoring of students to identify sick people, prohibition of their contact with relatives, cleaning of premises, and announcement of extraordinary long vacations, turned out to be very effective. If among the professors of the university there were sick and died from cholera, then among the students in 1831, according to archival data, not a single death was recorded, and in 1849 only one student fell ill with cholera.