The Professionalization of Women Forensic Physicians in the Russian Empire: The Experience of the Women’s Medical Institute (1901−1917)

Introduction. In the late nineteenth century, the Russian Empire faced an acute shortage of qualified medical personnel, which brought to the forefront the issue of establishing higher educational institutions for the training of women physicians. With the opening of the St. Petersburg Women’s Medical Institute in 1897 and the granting of women access to higher medical education, women became actively involved in the processes of professionalization and specialization within medical science in the Russian Empire. The study examines the participation of women physicians in the field of forensic medicine in the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Particular attention is paid to the Women’s Medical Institute — the largest institution for the training of women physicians — and to the careers of its graduates.
Methods and Materials. The study applied the general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, and logical generalization, as well as the principles of historicism and objectivity and the historical-genetic method. The methodological framework is further informed by approaches from gender studies and the prosopographical method. The source base includes medical and forensic legislation of the Russian Empire, specialized medical periodicals, dissertation works by the first women physicians, and unpublished archival materials from the Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg and the Russian State Historical Archive.
Results. Legal and regulatory acts governing the professional rights of women physicians are analyzed, together with the specific features of the teaching of forensic medicine at the Women’s Medical Institute. Drawing on the biographies of the first female forensic medical experts, A. M. Smyslova and M. M. Solunskova, the paper presents the results of research reconstructing the trajectories of the scientific and professional careers of women physicians in one of the most traditionally male-dominated fields of medicine.
Conclusion. The study concludes that the combination of the institutionalization of forensic medicine within the Women’s Medical Institute and the relative flexibility of medical legislation created unique conditions in the Russian Empire for women’s entry into the forensic medical profession, despite the persistence of gender-based and legal restrictions. The results of this study may be of interest to scholars in the fields of the history of medicine, higher education, and law, as well as to specialists in gender history.