Historical research takes place in many forms and in many locations. This research, which has been translated for us, introduces us to an heroic pioneering Ukrainian woman surgeon.

During the Spring of 1932 in the Ukrainian city of Kiev, on a sunny day in March, a very small group of mourners escorted the body of a woman from an apartment at 7 Kruglouniversitetskaya Street. She had been one of the most notable medical figures in Russian medical history. 

Princess Vera Ignatievna Giedroyc was born in Kiev on 7 April 1870. Her origins lay in a noble but poor Lithuanian family. Vera’s grandfather, Ignatius Bonyfacievitch, was involved in a Polish uprising in 1863. A rebellion in Lithuania, trying to establish a Polish-Lithuanian state had been crushed by the Russians and nearly 400 men were executed, including Ignatius. Vera’s father and siblings lost their aristocratic titles and privileges and sought refuge with friends in the Samara district, near the river Volga in the south west of Russia...