Partner Maria Dmitrievna Nirod
Queer Places:
Kruhlouniversytetska St, 7, Kyiv, Ukraine, 02000
Savior-Transfiguration Cemetery, Yahidna St, Kyiv, Ukraine, 02000
Princess Vera Gedroits (April 19, 1870 – March, 1932) was a Russian doctor of medicine and author. She was the first female military surgeon in Russia, the first female professor of surgery, and the first woman to serve as a physician in the Imperial Palace of Russia. She taught nursing techniques to the Tsarina and her daughters, Olga and Tatiana, and they became assistants to her in her surgical operations.
One of the other nurses she trained at Tsarskoye Selo, Countess Maria Dmitrievna Nirod, would later become Gedroits' life-long partner. During the demobilization after the October Revolution, Gedroits was injured in January 1918 and taken to a military hospital in the Pechersk neighborhood of Kiev. While recuperating, Gedroits moved in with Countess Nirod, with whom she lived for the remainder of her days. Initially they lived in an apartment at Kruhlouniversytetska St, 7, Kyiv, according to their neighbor, Irina Avdiyeva, as a married couple.
As soon as she was able to return to work, Gedroits began working in the hospital of the Intercession Monastery and by 1919 had established a clinic to perform maxillofacial surgery. In 1920, when the Kiev Medical Institute organized a surgery department, she was invited by Yevgeny Tcherniakhovsky to join the faculty. In 1921, she began working as an external lecturer, teaching a course on pediatric surgery. She was appointed as a professor of medicine in 1923 and entered a period of publishing as an academic surgeon. In 1929, following Tcherniakhovsky's arrest, Gedroits became the departmental head of surgery. But the following year, during the Soviet purge, she was removed from her post and denied a pension. Using funds she had saved, she purchased a house on the outskirts of Kiev, where she and Nirod moved together.
Continuing to work as a surgeon from time to time at the Intercession Monastery's hospital, she devoted the next two years to writing, publishing a series of fictionalized autobiographies. Diagnosed with cancer in 1931, Gedroits died in March 1932, aged 61, of uterine cancer. She was buried in the Savior-Transfiguration Cemetery, also known as the Korchevat cemetery.
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