Who is Vera Gedroitz, the surgeon who revolutionized war medicine | Culture | Entertainment

There are two things that have defined Vera Gedroitz: her passion for medicine and her revolutionary essence.

Who can imagine a princess becoming obsessed with medicine?

When she was little. Vera was a boisterous girl who dressed in ‘man’s clothes’ because it was more comfortable for her; In addition, her siblings saw her as an innate leader. They also expelled her for making fun of her teachers; and years later, while studying as a physician, she joined revolutionary youth groups, resulting in an arrest in 1892.

Princess Vera Ignatievna Gedroitz, of the Lithuanian royalty, was born on April 19, 151 years ago, in 1870, in the Oriol Governorate of the Russian Empire (Ukraine). She was the third of five siblings, in a family in which her mother came from Germany and her father belonged to the monarchy of Lithuania.

According to the newspaper’s journalist Alberto López The countryVera’s interest in becoming a doctor was born after the death of her brother Sergei, with whom the iconic nature of medicine had a close relationship. From that crucial point in his life, his goal was to avoid the suffering of other people.

Determined to study, because she was banned in Russia, she pretended to be in a relationship with one of her best friends and married him to travel to Switzerland. There he specialized in surgery and graduated with excellent grades. Although he later had to return to Russia due to family disputes.

In 1900 he returned home and started working in a cement factory. But because she was the only doctor in the area, she also looked after the farmers. The conditions in which the communities lived were deplorable: they lacked proper hygiene or quality food, and the working environment was unhealthy. So his work life turned out to be more complicated than it seemed.

However, Vera Gedroitz found the time to write papers on advanced surgery that earned her prestige in Europe. His writings were translated into French and German.

Tired of the situation she was living in, she managed to get a degree as a Russian doctor – because she had only a Swiss title so far – and this allowed her to practice in other parts of the country.

But peace has disappeared in her life since the war broke out and she volunteered.

It was during this time that he introduced abdominal surgery (laparotomies) on soldiers with stab wounds. They intervened on soldiers as soon as they were wounded, with such success that the practice became popular all over Russia.

Vera not only began to practice a kind of medicine that had never been used before, but all the processes were carried out on the hospital train. This was an equipped vehicle installed directly on the battlefield, where she was in charge.

In 1909, after the war, she was appointed chief physician of the Court Hospital, summoned by Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. There he was in charge as a pediatrician for royal children and headed the departments of Surgery and Gynecology-Obstetrics. In addition, she began teaching basic medicine to Empress Alexandra and her daughters Tatiana and Olga, who helped her through the war as nurses during the beginning of World War I.

After the Russian Revolution, she continued her career in various health centers and as a teacher, until one of the Stalinist purges removed her from her position.

However, thanks to his savings, he bought a house and spent the rest of his years living with Maria Nirod, a countess he met while working at court who would become his partner.

Over the years, Dr. Vera continued to write and publish works on medicine as fiction, until her death in March 1932 as a result of uterine cancer, after a life devoted to medicine and aid to the victims of war and violence. (I)