Google celebrated 151st birth anniversary of Vera Gedroits on April 19 with a doodle.
Princess Vera Ignatievna Gedroits was a Russian surgeon, professor, poet, and author. She is credited as Russia’s first female military surgeon and one of the world’s first female professors of surgery, who saved countless lives through her service and innovations in the field of wartime medicine.
She was born on 19 April, 1870 into a prominent family of Lithuanian royal descent in Kiev, then part of the Russia. In her late teens, she left Russia to study medicine in Switzerland. Vera returned home at the turn of the 20th century, and began her medical career as the surgeon at a factory hospital.
When the Russia-Japan war broke out in 1904, Dr Vera volunteered as a surgeon on a Red Cross hospital train. She performed complex abdominal surgeries in the converted railway car with such unprecedented success that her technique was adopted as the new standard by the Russian government.
