The Medical Woman as Amateur Detective in Anna Kingsford’s ‘A Cast for a Fortune: The Holiday Adventures of a Lady Doctor.’

Anna Kingsford’s “A Cast for a Fortune: The Holiday Adventures of a Lady Doctor” (1877) depicts a medical woman who becomes entangled in a murder plot whilst on vacation. Assuming the mantle of amateur detective, Dr Mary Thornton intervenes to prevent Dr George Pomeroy poisoning his sister-in-law, a wealthy widow. This little-known short story appeared at a critical time in the medical-woman movement in Britain. In contemporary medical writing and popular culture, the woman doctor was often represented as unfeminine and even as morbid or morally degenerate. Conversely, Kingsford portrays a healthy woman doctor who upholds professional ethics and criminal justice, while the story’s medical man is an unscrupulous villain. By exposing and denouncing Dr Pomeroy, Dr Thornton restores medicine’s reputation. Drawing on interdisciplinary research across literary studies and the history of medicine, this article positions Kingsford’s story at the advent and nexus of three emerging sub-genres: female detective fiction, the medical mystery, and medical woman fiction. I argue that, through the depiction of its heroine, “A Cast for a Fortune” constructs the amateur female sleuth and early woman doctor not as an outsider, but as the guardian of medico-morality.

Kornelija Rakić: A Woman Doctor for Women and Children in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

<p>This short biography focuses on the life and medical activities of Kornelija Rakić (1879–1952), a Serbian female pioneer of medicine from the then Hungarian province of Vojvodina, who acquired an MD from the University of Budapest in 1905. Rakić came from a humble background, and a Vojvodina Serbian women’s organization enabled her to become a physician and pursue her social medicine mission. After a futile attempt to open a private practice as a “woman doctor for women” in Novi Sad in 1906, she successfully applied to the Austro-Hungarian provincial government in Sarajevo for the position of an official female physician in occupied Bosnia. Rakić began her career as an Austro-Hungarian (AH) official female physician in Bihać (1908–1912) and was transferred to Banja Luka in 1912 and to Mostar in 1917–1918. Kornelija Rakić stayed in Mostar after the monarchy collapsed in 1918 and continued to work as a public health officer in the service of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, founded in 1918. Subsequently, she served as the head of the “dispensary for mothers and children” at the Public Health Centre in Mostar, founded in 1929, where she practiced until her retirement in 1949. After World War II, Rakić served as Vice President of the Red Cross Society in Mostar. She received numerous awards and medals from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. Kornelija Rakić died in Mostar in 1952 and was buried at the local Orthodox cemetery of Bjelušine.</p><p><strong> Conclusion</strong>. Kornelija Rakić (1879–1952) was the first Serbian female physician in Novi Sad, Vojvodina, and she was employed as an AH official female physician in Bihać (1908–1912), Banja Luka (1912–1917) and Mostar (1917–1918). After World War I, she participated in the establishment and expansion of public health institutions in Mostar and Herzegovina from 1918–1949 against the backdrop of the devastation of the two World Wars.</p>

H. Kant’s Autobiographical Novel «The Stay» («Der Aufenthalt», 1976): Fiction and Reality

The theme of Kant’s autobiographical novel «The Stay» (Der Aufenthalt, 1976) is the spiritual rebirth of German prisoner of war, a soldier of the Hitlerite ar-my. The article reveals the interaction of two components found in the novel: the fic-tional and the real ones in depicting this complex psychological process. The analysis of the chapters (X, XV, VI) shows various forms of artistic –aesthetic processing of authentic autobiographical material. In Chapter X the author «collects» his own emotional impressions, experienced by him in different periods of his life (such as cold, loneliness, hunger) and «ties» them to the situation of the main character sitting in a lonely cell in a prison. In Chapter XV he «adds» to real autobiographical facts an important artistic detail –a school pencil case of a Jewish girl killed by Nazis. In Chapter VI Kant makes a masterful use of temporal and narrative distance: the hero estimates the decisive episode of his youth –a conversation with a Russian woman-doctor from the viewpoint of a mature person recalling his life.

Review Article on A Fragmented Feminism: The Life and Letters of Anandibai Joshee By Meera Kosambi, Ram Ramaswamy, Madhavi Kolhatkar & Aban Mukherji

A Fragmented Feminism: The Life and Letters of Anandibai Joshee is the seminal work on social history about the first woman doctor of India, Anandibai Gopal Joshee written by the sociologist Meera Kosambi and Edited by Ram Ramaswamy, Madhavi Kolhatkar and Aban Mukherji. It provides insight into the psychosocial impacts of culture on Indian women through the life of Dr. Anandibai Gopal Joshee, India’s first women doctor. The author collected the letters written by Anandibai, newspaper reports on her, her poems in Marathi and rare photographs of her to craft the biography of her life. This book resembles an epistolary style in its narrative quality accompanied by annotations and explanations by the author and Editors. Anandibai, who was graduated in western medicine at America, lived during the nineteenth century pre-independence India where access to basic education was a distant dream. This book stands as a witness to practices of child marriage, physical and emotional abusement on women. (Kosambi, 19) ‘In childhood the mind is immature and the body undeveloped. And you know how I acted on these occasions. If I had left, you at that immature age, as you kept on suggesting, what would have happened? (And any number of girls have left their homes because of harassment from mothers-in-law and husbands). I did not do so because I was afraid that my ill-considered behaviour would tarnish my father’s honour… And I requested you not to spare me, but to kill me. In out society, for centuries there has been no legal barrier between husband and wives; and if it exists, it works against women! Such being the vase, I had no recourse but to allow you to hit me with chairs and bear it with equanimity. A Hindu woman has not right to utter a word or to advise her husband. On the contrary she has right to allow her husband to do what he wishes and to keep quiet.’

Sofia Parfanovych - a Woman Doctor, an Innovator of Medical Education in Ukraine: some actual issues

The article analyzes the main milestones of the prominent Ukrainian doctor, public figure, writer of the early to mid-twentieth century Sofia Parfanovych. There are three main aspects of her historical heritage: scientific, educational and literary. New variants of topics of lectures and seminars for studying the history of Ukrainian medicine of the beginning of the XX century in the course of disciplines “History of medicine” and “Development of medical knowledge” are offered.

Woman doctor M. A. Panfilovich. A case of eversion of the uterus. (Collection of protocols General Kaluga doctors for 1893 Kaluga. 1894, p. 53)

A 20-year-old woman in childbirth, 41/2 weeks after childbirth (labor proceeded with a simple midwife, but apparently without vigorous interventions on her side), it was stated: high temperature, bleeding and typical inversion of the uterus.

Gisela Januszewska (née Rosenfeld), an Austro- Hungarian ‘Woman Doctor for Women’ in Banjaluka, 1899–1912

<p>The focus of this article is on the biography and medical activity of Gisela Januszewska (nee Rosenfeld) in Austro-Hungarian (AH) occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) between 1899 and 1912. Rosenfeld, later Januszewska and then Kuhn(ova) by marriage, was the fifth of a total of nine official female physicians who were employed by the AH administration to improve the health and hygienic conditions among Bosnian and Bosnian Muslim women. In 1893, Gisela Kuhn moved from Brno, Moravia to Switzerland to pursue her medical studies; she was awarded her Doctorate in Medicine (MD) from the University of Zurich in 1898. In the same year, she took up her first position as a local health insurance doctor for women and children in Remscheid but was prohibited from practising in the German Empire. In 1899, she successfully applied to the AH authorities for the newly established position of a female health officer in Banjaluka and began working there in July 1899. She lost her civil service status upon marrying her colleague, Dr Wladislaw Januszewski, in 1900 but carried out her previously officially assigned tasks as a private physician. In 1903, she was employed as a ‘woman doctor for women’ at the newly established municipal outpatient clinic in Banjaluka. Upon her husband’s retirement in 1912, the couple left BH and settled in Graz, Styria. After, World War I Januszewska ran a general medical practice in Graz until 1935 and worked as a health insurance-gynaecologist until 1933. She received several AH and Austrian awards and medals for her merits as a physician and a volunteer for humanitarian organisations. Upon Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany 1938, however, she was classified a Jew and was deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp (Terezin, Bohemia), where she died in 1943.</p><p><strong>Conclusion. </strong>Gisela Januszewska, nee Rosenfeld (1867–1943) viewed her medical practice as a social medicine mission which she put into practice as a ‘woman doctor for woman’ in Banjaluka, BH (1899–1912) and Graz, Austria (1919–1935).</p>

Dr. Eva Haljecka (1869-1947) first female surgeon and gynecologist in Serbia

Dr. Eva Haljecka, a Jew of Polish origin, was born on 1869 in Poland, died on 1949 in Yugoslavia, Belgrade, was the first woman surgeon and gynecologist-obstetrician in Serbia and Yugoslavia. Carried out on 1910 the first caesarean section in Niš. She was a duty manager in district hospital in Niš in three occasions - during the Balkan wars, in the World War I and after the World War I. Dr. Eva Haljecka was the first woman doctor of that time in Serbia who seek the full equality beetween male and female doctors and she was awarded for that. German newspaper Illustrirte Zeitung wrote about her and also about other women doctors - Draga Ljočić, Darinka Maletić-Banković, Marija Vučetić-Prita and Ljubica Đurić. Dr. Eva Haljecka accepted Serbia as a new homeland and made it for her all that he could.

“Labor as freedom, labor as burden”: on the early period of women’s professional employment in Russia

This article discusses the emergence of the Russian working woman employed in skilled labor from the second half 19th century until the 1930s. In Russia, educated women entered the sphere of socially significant labor during the Great Reforms. The subsequent development largely explains the position of the working woman in modern Russia - hence the topicality of the present paper. Sources for this article are record-keeping documents of tsarist and Soviet institutions, statistical information, press materials as well as memoirs. Among the factors that influenced the formation of the Russian female working class in the pre-revolutionary period were a social movement for the development of female education, the emergence of special vocational schools for women, the Zemstvo reforms, industrialization and, eventually, World War I. The article shows changes in the nature of the employment of women after the 1917 Revolution. The authors document the rapid growth of women’s participation in all spheres of the USSR’s national economy in the 1930s, in particular health care, education, and work in the apparatus of state, party and economic bodies. As a result, during this period the professional traits of the three main types of Soviet female workers were formed: the woman-doctor, the woman-teacher and the womanfunctionary. At the same time, the authors come to the conclusion that Soviet rule brought no fundamental changes in the conditions of everyday life, so that the Soviet woman-intellectual turned out to be a “fighter of two fronts” - labor and domestic.