And all thanks to the work of one woman, full of contradictions, which broke all the rules of its time. Despite this, she was ignored by the Europeans and soon forgotten by all. A more ignored and invisible doctor, she participates in that tradition that also prevented us, for example, from seeing the Roman doctors, who were so present in the sources. The same one that has led to the coining of what is known as the “Matilda Effect”, and which dictates that all progress will be assigned, by default, to a man. A decade later, in World War I, this neglect cost the West a great number of lives. We are talking about Vera Ignátievna Gedroitz (or Giedroyć), pragmatic physician, but also writer of poetry and short stories, revolutionary, but also member of the circle of the imperial court, pioneer and forgotten.
Vera Gedroitz was born in a town in Briansk in 1870, into an aristocratic (but not excessively rich) Lithuanian family, when this region was still part of the Russian Empire, and received the title of princess. In fact, many sources list 1876 as her date of birth, which comes from the fact that Gedroitz falsified said date when her age exceeded the limit for active service in the war, marching again as a doctor to the front beyond the forty years. Her parents were progressive enough to let Vera choose her own path... and she didn't hesitate to do it.
The doctor
After being educated at home, like every young lady of the time, she studied the equivalent of high school in a gymnasium local and then in St. Petersburg. There, despite her princess title, she got involved in subversive student movements , the narodnichestvo movement , in a troubled pre-revolutionary era. Discovered by the police, she was arrested and expelled. So she went back to her father's house, under house arrest and with the promise of parental surveillance.
Likewise, at that time, access to university was almost impossible for women. Only the University of Saint Petersburg had opened the doors to female higher education, despite the opposition of Tsar Alexander II, but in the short periods from 1859 to 1863 and from 1870 to 1881, it was added to this, in the same city an institute that gave university courses for women , known as Bestuzhev Courses. And that was it.
With this scenario, Vera decided to study abroad. She just had to get out of the country. To do this, he manages to convince his friend Nikolai Belozerov to enter into a marriage of convenience (which would dissolve a decade later and which he compared to that of Sofia Kovalévskaya), obtains a passport and escapes to Lausanne (Switzerland) to study medicine with César Roux. she graduated with the highest grade in almost all subjects , impressing the surgeon, who offered to work directly with him at her clinic.
The story probably would have been very different if a family crisis, the death of her sister and the illness of her mother, had not made her father beg to come back, looking overwhelmed. Although Vera would have a reasonable fear of the Russian secret police, she returned home. Already in Russia, instead of opting for a family life, a normal marriage and starting a family, she decided to continue exercising. To do this, she passed an exam to validate the title in 1902. She was not the first, since a British article from 1904 calculated that at this time 3.5% of medical practitioners were women , but this included a wide variety of professions. Of course, she was the first military surgeon and doctor and, in addition, she continued her research and, a decade later, she would become the first woman with a doctorate in medicine.
Her first job was in a factory, the Maltsevsky. There she decided to change things. Not only did he expand the hospital and manage to equip it better, but he also defended the right of workers to a certain level of well-being, fighting to improve hygiene conditions, allowing food to be heated, and serving the local population in addition to the workers. She also helped in the training of local doctors or insisted on things that may seem as obvious to us as that all doctors and participants in the operations wash their hands. Meanwhile, with a strong sense of social justice , she continued to be watched by the secret police for her political involvement.
When the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) broke out, she decided to join the Red Cross and serve on the front lines. She there she faced the rest of the doctors. While everyone thought abdominal injuries were untreatable, Vera insisted that early treatment would save lives. She was not wrong. Pioneer in laparoscopy, she managed to reduce mortality from 70% to 50% her, and she presented a long report, with graphs and images, that would change the Russian medical protocol completely. Also aware of the need for early action, she moved the medical trains as close as possible to the front.
These trains, with a capacity for around two hundred and fifty wounded people, although this limit was frequently exceeded, and a wagon fitted out as an operating room, were complemented by other medical vehicles. It was not a safe job and, many times, they became the priority target of the Japanese. Many of the surgeons were killed, missing, wounded, or taken prisoner. Not a few committed suicide.
The West ignored her numerous articles and reports of her. They would have to learn the lesson of the need for laparotomies a decade later, in World War I, after many preventable deaths.
After the war and after a period in which he returned to work in the factories, against all odds, he ended up directing, at the express request of the tsarina, the surgery service and the gynecology one at the Hospital de la Corte she, in Tsarskoye Selo, living there the outbreak of the First World War. The arrival of a new boss and, even more, being a woman, was not something entirely well received by many of the doctors. But the royal will was a difficult thing to disobey. And the strong character of Vera, who smoked like a carter, dressed in the (much) more comfortable male clothes and spoke energetically, did not help a possible disobedience either.
In fact, her strong character led Vera to more than one confrontation with Rasputin , arriving at some point to grab him by the shoulders, throw him out of the room of a patient (a lady-in-waiting and a close friend of the tsarina) and close the door in his face. Without contemplation. Likewise, she trained the daughters of the royal family (and other aristocrats) in medical and nursing matters. They worked assiduously in the hospital, bandaging the wounded, taking care of the bedding or the sterilization and preparation of the material.
Vera ended up enlisting again in 1917 to go to the war front. As stated, she was over the age limit so she simply falsified her date of birth . Perhaps otherwise, she would have ended up in the Ipatiev house sharing a fate with the rest of the Romanovs. Little is known about her performance as a surgeon in the 6th Siberian Division, except for a promotion, which was unusual for a woman, and that she had to serve in the forces of the newly created Ukrainian People's Republic, although we do know that she was injured in 1918 and was evacuated to kyiv.
her There she became the first professor of medicine at the kyiv Medical Institute her, she kept practicing and publishing. In fact, she ended up being appointed director of the Institute's surgery department, breaking another of the social barriers of the time.
However, she was forcibly withdrawn, without pension or recognition, in one of Stalin's purges , in 1929. she Together with her partner, she bought a farm and decided to take her retirement philosophically (although she complained about her cow's obstinacy in not giving milk). A few years later, in 1932, she died of cancer, a disease she had extensively researched.
The writer
Vera Gedroitz not only published articles, books and medical manuals, including her thesis, but she also fruitfully engaged in other types of writing. In fact, after her forced retirement, she decided to write her autobiography , consciously and heavily fictionalized, in three volumes (Kaftanchik , Liakh and Otryv ), which were published in 1931.
Before that she had dedicated herself, above all, to poetry . At times, this dedication led to some displeasure, such as when she was expelled from the gymnasium for a series of satirical poems. After the death of her brother, he adopted her name, Sergéi Gedroitz, as a pseudonym to publish all of her non-academic works, including her autobiography. Between 1911 and 1912 she was admitted to the Poets Guild, which she helped financially to make possible the birth of the magazine Hyperborea , in which she also published part of her poems.
This group, based in St. Petersburg, met regularly at the home of Mikhail Lozinsky, a well-known Russian translator. There she shared gatherings and debates with prominent poets of the so-called Acmeism, such as Anna Akhmatova or Nikolai Gumiliov, who would also suffer repression after the Revolution and the fall of the Tsar, both being banned and the latter being shot in 1921. In fact, a friend of Vera, to whom she left her academic legacy to serve in the future, she was accused of treason, when a letter from Roux, a foreigner, was found.
In addition to the poems published in Hyperborea , Gedroitz published a book of poems titled Veg (a play on words between her initials and the German word for “way”), as well as another book of poems and stories. Of course, it seems that her forays into her literary field were much less successful than her medical activities, and some reviews of her, such as those of Nikolai Gumiliov in the magazine Apolo about her first works, they were even cruel. Her later works were better received.
The mistress
Vera Gedroitz was openly lesbian . Her first known partner was a woman she met in Switzerland. Despite the initial plans for both of them to live together in Switzerland, in the end the family of her lover (she was married and had children) was stronger, and sent a farewell note to Vera that almost caused her suicide. Q>
Later, already in Tsarskoye Selo, she met what would be the second love of her life, Maria Dmitrievna Nirod (maiden name Mujanova), an aristocrat who worked as a nurse in the hospital, a widow with two children, Fyodor and Marina. She was separated by the war and the revolution, against which Vera had conflicting feelings, between her appreciation for the royal family and her ideals of change. Maria Nirod fled, escaping the purges of the aristocrats closest to the Romanovs, and Vera went to the war front. They met again in kyiv, a city to which an injured Vera was evacuated, and where she decided to reside, soon moving to Maria Nirod's house. They also worked together again, again as a doctor and nurse.
Her life, openly married, was not entirely well seen by her children... or by the authorities. However, Gedroitz still had contacts, and had operated on more than one influential person, so the arrests always ended in a more or less quick release. After Vera's death, Maria Nirod sold the farm and moved to a monastery, although she ended her days in a house in northern Ukraine. 
Despite the medals received, his medical work and teaching, her publications and the eventful nature of her life, the story of Vera Gedroitz has barely been remembered . Her innovations had to be relearned, and her legacy was lost amid wars, purges, and Western indifference.
Bibliography
- Bennett J. Princess Vera Gedroits:military surgeon, poet, and author. British Medical Journal 305(6868):1532-1534, 1992
- Blokhina N.N. (2016) “V.I. Gedroits, a factory surgeon and a follower of Cesare Roux of Lausanne”. Klin. mid .; 94 (2):154—160.
- Kelly, C. (1998) A History of Russian Women’s Writing, 1820-1992 . Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1998
- Khokhlov V.G.(2011) «Цвет жизни белой» — Брянск:ООО «Брянское СРП ВОГ».
- Svetlana Maire, « Véra Giedroyc :une princesse pas comme les autres », Les femmes créatrices en Russie, du XVIIIe siècle à la fin de l'âge d'Argent , available online at http://institut-est-ouest.ens-lsh.fr/spip.php?article366
- Wilson, Ben J. (2007). “Relearning in military surgery:The contributions of Princess Vera Gedroitz,” in Stapleton, Melanie (ed.). Proceedings of the 16th Annual History of Medicine Days March 30 and 31, 2007 . Calgary, Alberta, Canada:University of Calgary. pp. 159–167