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Salomeya Rusetskaya
RUSETSKAYA Solomeya Regina
(1718 - after 1760)
Self-taught physician, traveller, memoirist, the first woman doctor in the history of Belarus
Solomeya Rusetskaya was born near Novogrudok, in Grodno region. From the age of 14, she lived in Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey), together with her husband, a famous German physician and ophthalmologist, who helped her to master the basics of medical practice, including ophthalmology. In 1735 she served in the harem of a Turkish pasha in Sofia (Bulgaria), where an Italian imprisoned doctor acquainted her with descriptions of various diseases and medicines, with the properties of herbs, pharmacological formulations, prescription regulations in Latin, and gave her a set of books on medicine and pharmacy. Rusetskaya remarried to an Austrian officer, whom she had ransomed in Bulgaria from the Turkish captivity. Along with him she came back to her homeland, she stayed in Nesvizh, Minsk region. In 1738 Rusetskaya practised medicine in St. Petersburg at the court of the Russian Empress Anna Ivanovna. Through Poland, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, Rusetskaya travelled to Slovenia to the parents of her husband. She lived in the Austrian capital Vienna, where she worked as a physician at the Turkish embassy, in the capital of the Principality of Moldavia Jassy (now in Romania), where she served as a court physician, in Ukraine. In 1743 she left her husband, travelled round Europe, visiting Romania, Albania, Macedonia, Greece. In 1759, in Constantinople, Rusetskaya became a court physician at the sultan's harem. In 1760 she wrote memoirs in Polish, which were discovered in 1896. In 1760 Rusetskaya went to Palestine. Her further fate is unknown.
Works:
1. Proceder podrozy i zycia mego awantur. Krakow: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1957.
2. Авантуры майго жыцця. Мінск: Мастацкая літаратура, 1993.
Literature:
1. Kuchowicz Z. Wizerunki niepospolitych niewiast staropolskich XVI – XVIII wieku. Lodz: Wydawnictwo Lodzkie, 1972. S. 298–319.
2. Грыцкевіч В. П. Адысея наваградскай лекаркі: Саламея Русецкая. Мінск: Навука і тэхніка, 1989.
3. Konczacki J. M., Aterman K. Regina Salomea Pilsztynowa, Ophthalmologist in 18th-Century Poland // Surv. Ophthalmol. 2002. Vol. 47, No. 2. P. 189–195.
© National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 2011
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