Google Doodle celebrates birth anniversary of Russian doctor Vera Gedroits

She was known for her innovations in battlefield medicine

Google Doodle today celebrates the 151st birth anniversary of Russian surgeon, poet, and author Dr. Vera Gedroits. She was the first female military surgeon in Russia and one of the first female professors of surgery. She was also the first woman physician for the Russian royal family.

She was known for her innovations in the field of battlefield medicine. She adopted the method of laparotomy (surgical cut into the abdominal cavity) for treating penetrating wounds.

She has authored several papers on nutrition, surgical treatments, and a book on her experiences as an industrial doctor. In 1912, she was awarded a doctorate of medicine by the University of Moscow, for her work in hernia repair. In 1914, she published another book titled Surgical Discourses for Nurses and Doctors.

She was diagnosed with cancer in 1931 and died in March 1947, aged 78.

Sister of Mercy Empress Alexandra Feodorovna(left) and surgeon Vera Gedroits in the dressing hospital of the Russian Palace. Credit: https://www.romanovempire.org/

 

In 2007, an article in the journal

Clinical and Investigative Medicine lamented the fact that the world has forgotten Gedroits story. “It is a wonder that her significant and diverse accomplishments are detailed in so few sources...It is clear that her surgical accomplishments deserve recognition, at least as much as that heaped upon those who effected almost identical feats over a decade later,” wrote Ben J. Wilson from the University of Calgary.

“The limited audience to which Gedroits presented her work defined its limited impact. Russia failed to show, and the West failed to see, Gedroits’ discoveries...The tale of Vera Gedroits is but one illustration of an unfortunately prevalent cycle of forgetting and relearning,” wrote Prof. Wilson.