Google Doodle pays tribute to Dr Vera Gedroits, Russia's first female military surgeon, on her birth anniversary

Google on Monday celebrated Russian surgeon Dr. Vera Gedroits 151st birthday with a doodle. Gedroits, who was also an author, poet and a professor, is known as Russia's first female military surgeon. She was also one of the world's first female professors of surgery and first woman to serve as a physician in the Imperial Palace of Russia.

Through her work and innovations in the field of wartime medicine, she saved several lives. Gedroits was born into a prominent family of Lithuanian royal descent in Kiev on April 19, 1870. When she was a teenager, she moved to Switzerland to study medicine. After returning to Russia as a doctor in her field, Gedroits began her medical career as a surgeon at a factory hospital. On her birth anniversary, Google paid a tribute to her work and contributions, one of which was her initiative to perform abdominal surgeries against established policies during the Russo-Japanese War that changed the way battlefield medicine was practiced.

"When the Russo-Japanese War broke out in 1904, Dr. Gedroits volunteered as a surgeon on a Red Cross hospital train. Under threat of enemy fire, she performed complex abdominal operations in a converted railway car with such unprecedented success that her technique was adopted as the new standard by the Russian government. Following her battlefield service, Dr. Gedroits worked as a surgeon for the Russian royal family before her return home to Kiev, where she was appointed professor of surgery at the University of Kiev in 1929," Google wrote on its doodle page.


Gedroits, who authored several medical papers on nutrition and surgical treatments during her time as a professor, had also published multiple collections of poems, and several nonfiction works. She published a memoir in 1931, titled 'Life' that told the story of her personal journey that led to service on the front lines in 1904.