Vera Ignatievna Gedroits — the First Woman Professor of Surgery

Abstract

The first woman from Russia to work as a surgeon, Vera Ignatievna Gedroits, had many achievements in her career most of which had been forgotten by the Western world until Google honoured her on her 151st birth anniversary with a doodle. She was also one of the World’s first female Professor of Surgery, the first woman to work as a military surgeon and the first woman to serve as a doctor in Imperial palace. She is credited for revolutionising the management of war-inflicted, penetrating abdominal wounds with early explorative laparotomy. Apart from being a poet and an author, she also gave the world the concept of making a makeshift operation theatre on a mobile train in the battlefield.