Authors

Sasha Rasmussen¹;  ¹ University of Nottingham, Department of History, UK

Discussion

In his doctoral thesis of 1900, medical student A. N. Aleksandrov proposed the electrification of women’s genitalia via the insertion of vaginal electrodes as a treatment for so-called “female diseases”.  The following year, the first cohort of female students graduated from the Women’s Medical Institute in St Petersburg. Were female patients more likely to confide intimate details about their health and lives to a woman doctor? And did a woman’s own experience of embodiment contribute to her approach as a medical practitioner? This paper considers how the advent of women to the medical professions in the final decades of the Russian Empire disrupted conventional wisdom regarding women’s health and bodies, coinciding with developments in the treatment of conditions such as dysmenorrhea and amenorrhea, painful intercourse, and venereal disease, as well as medical attitudes to fertility, miscarriage, and sexual desire in women. Furthermore, in the eyes of the state, the figure of the female medical student had the potential to be dually disruptive: her presence in educational and professional institutions challenged established gender hierarchies, and authorities feared that those who studied at institutions in Western Europe would return instilled with radical political ideas. Drawing principally on memoirs, diaries, and articles written by women physicians and on the doctoral theses of female medical students who studied in Paris or, from 1897 onwards, in St Petersburg, this paper situates women’s interventions in the fields of gynaecology and women’s health within wider medical discourse of the late Imperial period.