Vera Gedroits – the Princess, who invented the modern military surgery

May 26, 2019

On the 22. February 1905 was lost, the battle of Mukden for the army of the Tsar. After the fall of Port Arthur the Emperor to handle addresses Japanese army, the positions of the Russians with multiple attack peaks. Today, no one knows in the West, this battle, in the then-600,000 soldiers fought.

in Front of the city, the Doctor Vera Gedroits operated, it was for the sick and Wounded in a large field hospital, which had formed around their hospitals extract. The Princess decided not to let the sick in the lurch. In the middle of the night, under the rumbling of the cannon kills you evacuated the darkened train. The troops in the area were willing to pay as long as resistance until the Wounded had been evacuated, even if they would themselves cut off.

awards for bravery

While the locomotive rumbled through the night, operated Gedroits and your Team constantly, in order to save the most seriously Wounded. Always in fear that the enemy might discover the train, and under fire. For her bravery she received, among other things, the clasp of the order of the Holy Anna and the ribbon of Saint George – the highest awards of the Russian Empire.

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The 55. Regiment engaged in the battle of Mukden.

at the end, Vera Gedroits as a young woman had fled from the tsarist secret police in Switzerland. In Lausanne, she studied medicine, because Switzerland was one of the few countries that at the time, female medical students accepted. Back in Russia, they built a modern hospital for the cement factory Maltsov in the district Chizdrinsky. Rather by chance, the work in the factory they operated many of the workers in the belly and groin area. A skill that came to use later.

With the hospitals statement on the Front

Since 1904 the Russian-Japanese war broke out, whose disastrous course sealed the fate of the Tsar’s house, even if contemporaries could not know.

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The energetic Gedroits organized a mobile Hospital housed in a train, paid for by the Nobility. The staff consisted of volunteers. At the Front Gedroits broke with the methods of military medicine. The otherwise backward Russia had almost 80 hospital trains in use, which was extremely modern. Train and Hospital, which was housed in the houses of a village, organized the Gedroits according to the methods of a modern hospital. What is meant, above all, that she cared for cleanliness and Hygiene.

In addition, Vera Gedroits broke with the hitherto common practice of all military doctors, no operations in gunshot or stab injuries in the abdomen to perform. In the Wars before it was avoided to open the abdominal wall. Who had internal injuries, had to have either luck or he died. For this reluctance was also a reason for that: the level of Physicians was not generally high enough for such operations, moreover, it was usually not possible to produce in the box is a sterile environment. An Operation would have led almost certainly to an infection, so it was left up to the Wounded self.

Bold, energetic style

Gedroits realized now that a lot of people could be saved with internal injuries, if it was only ready to operate quickly. And you saw that in itself is a violation of the intestine did not have to be fatal. Dr. Gedroits’ aggressive surgical Management has violated the rules and was contrary to the non-operating climate in the second half of the 19th century. Century prevailed, wrote Ben J. Wilson, 2007.

In the process, she realized how crucial the time factor was. And they drew the consequences, to operate as close as possible to the Front – in the case of abdominal wounds, three hours remained to save the patient.

In six days in January, 1905, Vera Gedroits performed 56 major surgical procedures.

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In a figurative sense, one can say that their practice of decisive action in the later war medicine anticipated. However, even though Vera kept Gedroits their methods and experiences to be meticulously fixed, lost their findings yet. In the First world war, thousands could be saved, if their type of treatment would be enforced. After the carnage of the First world war, it took about two years, in the UK, the Doctors Owen Richards and Cuthbert Wallace, the shape of the treatment have discovered new, the Gedroits had tested ten years earlier.

follower of the Royal family

After the war, remained Vera Gedroits in the circle of the Tsar’s court, without question she was a strong Royalistin. It is reported, that they dared the eerie wonder of the monk Grigori Rasputin aside. The daughter of the house-physician of the Empress wrote: “Mademoiselle Gedroits, the looked, with their large size, a little bit of a man, was an imposing woman. As Rasputin made no indication that he wanted to move, she grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him out into the hallway and closed the door in his face.”

in 1917, she returned with the 6. Siberian guard regiment to the Front. She was injured and to Kiev evacuated. There she was appointed Professor of medicine. In 1929 she became head of the surgery Department of the Institute. Soviet purges led to their dismissal.

in 1932, died in Vera Gedroits of cancer.

sources: US National Library of Medicine; BBC; Semantic Scholar