Who is Vera Gedroitz, the princess surgeon to whom Google pays homage today

Today’s doodle pays tribute to Russian surgeon, teacher, poet and author Vera Gedroits, on the 151st anniversary of her birth. Dr. Gedroits is credited with being the country’s first military surgeon and one of the world’s first professors of surgery, saving countless lives through wartime service and innovations in medicine. .

Vera Ignatievna Gedroits was born on April 19, 1870 to a prominent family of Lithuanian royal descent in Kiev, which was then part of the Russian Empire. He shared his origins with the famous Radziwiłł family. He had four siblings: María, Ignaci, Nadezhda, Alexandra and Sergei, who died very young and to whom Vera had a special affection. In fact, he later used his name as a pseudonym to sign his literary creations.

After the death of his brother, he became particularly interested in medicine andShe wanted to study a discipline that would help her heal and prevent the suffering of others. She attended Bryansk Women’s School with Vasily Rozanov, but was expelled for her constant antics. Then her father took her to work as an assistant in a friend’s industry, and later she was readmitted to the school from which she graduated with distinction.

He continued his studies in St. Petersburg, where he attended the medical courses of professor of anatomy Peter Lesgaft. He wanted to keep improving and in order to do that he had to leave the country. At the time, he arranged a marriage of convenience with his friend Nikolai Belozerov. Belozerov’s military career led him to move to Siberia, while Vera used her new name to obtain a passport and enter Switzerland. There, she studied at the University of Lausanne, where she trained as a surgeon and obtained her diploma in 1898: she obtained her doctorate in medicine and surgery.

Upon her return, she was hired at the Maltsov Cement Factory in the Zhizdrinsky District of the oblast as a factory doctor. Although she was primarily responsible for the medical needs of the workers and their families, she also looked after the locals, as she was the only doctor in the district.

When the Russo-Japanese war broke out in 1904, Gedroits volunteered as a surgeon on a Red Cross hospital train. Under threat of enemy fire, he performed complex abdominal operations on a converted railway car with unprecedented success, to the point that his technique was adopted as a new standard by the Russian government.

In fact, Gedroits was the first to perform laparotomies on military patients. It should be noted that he had extensive experience in abdominal hernia surgery, which was the most frequent operation at the cement plant hospital where he had worked.

After her battlefield service, Dr Gedroits worked as a surgeon for the Russian royal family before returning home to Kiev, where she was appointed professor of surgery at the University of Kiev in 1929.

She is the author of several medical articles on nutrition and surgical treatments during her tenure as a teacher, But his talent as a writer was not limited to academics. Dr Gedroits also published multiple collections of poems and various non-fiction works, including the 1931 memoirs simply titled Life, who told the story of his personal journey that led to service on the front lines in 1904.

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