Without a passport and the right to study: how Nadezhda Suslova became the first female doctor in Russia

Nadezhda Suslova was derisively called "emancipe", "sheared», «blue stocking». But these taunts did not break her. She went to university, where she first became the first student and then the first female doctor with a doctorate.

At that time, it was almost impossible: women did not have the right to study at the university, they were not given passports, and sometimes they even threw stones at them as soon as they set foot on the threshold of the university.

We tell how a purposeful and courageous girl was able to build a career as a doctor and changed Russian society.

Opponent of "hated tsarism" and servant of the people

Nadezhda Suslova was born in 1843 in the Nizhny Novgorod province. Her father was a former serf. Count Sheremetiev, whom he served, gave him freedom and settled with his family in St. Petersburg. There, the life of the Suslovs was in full swing.

Father invested

into business, hired a staff of servants, and invited governesses for his daughters to teach them the exact sciences, European languages ​​and dances. The elder Suslov was different from his contemporaries: he believed that girls should receive a good education on an equal basis with boys.

For this, his daughters were grateful to him. Moreover, they perceived the knowledge they received not as a gift of fate, but as an opportunity to break into the people and devote their lives to serving the people.

Therefore, soon enough they entered the student circles of St. Petersburg and proclaimed themselves nihilists and opponents of "hated tsarism."

They took part in mass protest marches and wrote opposition stories for the Sovremennik magazine created by Nekrasov. Soon, Nadezhda realized that this was not enough for her: the girl wanted to do serious science and help people.

In her diaries, she wrote: “Then two areas attracted my attention - the upbringing of children and the care of the sick. I decided that caring for the sick is simpler, easier, more accessible than raising a child's soul. But in order to become a doctor, she needed to get an education, which at that time was almost impossible.

Experiments with current and a ban on learning

Women were forbidden to study at universities. Only in 1859 were they allowed to attend lectures as volunteers, and then without the right to take exams and receive a diploma. But that's not all: even if the girl managed to get into the university, she faced new obstacles. Teachers ignored female students' questions, male classmates booed and bullied them, and there were no women's toilets in the schools themselves.

But this did not frighten Nadezhda Suslova. She became a volunteer at the St. Petersburg Medical and Surgical Academy and began to engage in scientific work. For example, conducted experiments on herself: she applied the conductors from the induction electrical device to her hand and recorded the changes. These observations became the basis for articles "Change of skin sensations under the influence of electrical stimulation" in the then respected "Medical Bulletin".

An acquaintance of Nadezhda, Avdotya Panaeva, remembered: “She was very different from other young ladies of that time, who also attended lectures at the medical academy. There was no puffed-up boasting of her knowledge in her manner and conversation, and that ridiculous contempt with which they treated other women who did not attend lectures. It was evident from the energetic and intelligent expression of the young Suslova that she did not take up medicine out of empty vanity to pass for a modern advanced young lady.

It would seem that there was very little left before the fulfillment of the cherished dream of healing. But in 1863, an order was lowered from above: women should not be allowed into universities.

“I believe that the female sex, in terms of the features of its design and its mental and spiritual abilities, cannot be recognized as capable of either studying anatomy, necessary for medicine, nor for the acquisition of legal information, due to their dryness and strict sequence, nor for deep philological considerations," wrote education official E. F. von Bradke.

Upon learning of this news, Suslova's sister, Apollinaria, was instructed by her father to "comfort Nadenka" and ask her friends if the girl could be transferred to study abroad. Switzerland was chosen to implement the plans.

The first student - show at the faculty

At that time, women did not have own passports - the girl was entered first in the document of the father, and then - the husband. Therefore, dad accompanied Suslova on the way to the university. He said to her: “I believe you and respect you, I love you, and therefore I want your happiness and I will contribute by all means available to me to the fulfillment of your plans. I know that you will not go down a bad road, and therefore I bless you for all your undertakings.

So Nadezhda Suslova became the first officially recognized student of the University of Zurich. However, she did not succeed without difficulty.

"A female student is an unprecedented phenomenon, - wrote Hope in a diary. - The gentlemen of the professors of the medical faculty have created a special commission to resolve the issue about me. Professor Bromer, not without malice, informed me of her decision: “To accept Mademoiselle Suslova as a student only because this first attempt by a woman will be her last.”

“Oh, how wrong they are... Thousands will come for me!” Suslova commented in her diary.

However, not only the older generation of pundits treated the student with contempt. On the first day, male classmates got up under her bedroom windows and started throwing rocks at them in protest.

All this did not break Suslova. Even more: as a 24-year-old girl, she decided to defend the exam for the title of doctor of medicine. The rector of the University of Zurich was at first confused - he did not know if women could be awarded a doctoral degree. But after studying Swiss law, in the end decidedthat Suslova can try.

Scientists from all over Europe came to defend her dissertation "for the sake of the show". On this day, something happened that had never happened before: not a single woman in Switzerland had ever received a doctorate. Suslova became the first.

She was presented with a laurel wreath, on which was the inscription: "The first woman in Russia - a doctor of medicine." His Suslova kept yourself to death.

Petition to the emperor and the end of the puppet story

Suslova did not plan to stay in Europe, and this was the right decision. A little later, 10 years later, other Russian women who followed Nadezhda to Zurich were accused by the authorities of espionage and a dissolute lifestyle and demanded to return to their homeland without the right to graduate from the university and work in their specialty - which, however, was almost impossible anyway.

Nadezhda returned to Russia as a married woman. Even in her first year, she met a young physician, Friedrich Erisman, who, for the sake of his wife, was ready not only to leave his homeland, but also to accept Orthodoxy.

However, the medical establishment was again unfriendly towards Suslova. Despite having received her doctorate in Switzerland, she was still not allowed to practice. Then Nadezhda wrote a petition to the Emperor of the Russian Empire. And he personally allowed her to work in her specialty on the condition that she retake all the exams - already in St. Petersburg.

Obstetrician-gynecologist Suslova quickly fell in love with her patients. In the 19th century, it was not customary to undress in front of another man - even if he was a doctor.

Therefore, ladies often took dolls with them to the reception, on which they showed where and what hurts them.

With the advent of Suslova, the situation has changed - now, thanks to the fact that she personally could examine their bodies, the diagnoses became more accurate, and people began to recover more often. In one of Erisman's letters wrote: "I would like to know if there is a doctor with whom patients are more satisfied than with you."

In 1869, Suslova, together with Erisman, moved to the Nizhny Novgorod province, got a job in maternity Department, and also began to receive patients at home. At the same time, she constantly spokethat cannot deny people treatment. If the patients had no money, she took them for free.

In addition to the main work, Suslova continued to engage in social activities. With her help, women's paramedic courses were opened in St. Petersburg, working conditions in factories were improved, and the rights of women and children began to be treated more attentively. Despite all this, state officials considered Nadezhda “politically unreliable,” and her husband was generally ordered to be expelled from the country for participating in student protests.

Death in poverty

A couple of years later, Suslova remarried - to Alexander Golubev, a physician and winemaker. In Crimea he had vineyards and a house in the "Professor's Corner" - the territory on which the sites of various scientists were located.

Together with him, Nadezhda moved to the Crimea and continued to practice her craft.

She received the poor from nearby villages for free and bought medicines for them.

Also, thanks to her efforts, a school appeared in the neighborhood, where peasant children could study for free. However, the quiet life did not last long.

In 1918, during the Civil War, fighting broke out in the Crimea between the Reds and the Whites. Golubev's house was plundered, the entire fortune was taken from the family. It was too big a blow for Nadezhda. A couple of months later, she died of heart failure in poverty and hunger. By words writer Ivan Shmelev, she even "had nothing to lie in a coffin": "they laid her barefoot" in the ground.

And although her life ended tragically, Nadezhda Suslova fulfilled her dream of serving the people. Her words “Thousands will come for me” turned out to be prophetic. It was Suslova who inspired Sofia Kovalevskaya and Vera Figner to get an education, and today hundreds of women who dream of becoming doctors follow her example.