Salomea Halpir facts for kids
Salomea Halpir (1718 – after 1763) was a very skilled doctor, especially good at eye care. Many people consider her the first female doctor from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. We know about her life from her own writings, called memoirs, which she finished in 1760. These memoirs are special because they are a rare example of a woman's travel story from that time. Salomea Halpir had dreams and goals that were quite unusual for women in the 1700s. Instead of just focusing on being a wife and mother, she wanted to be a successful doctor and loved to travel and have adventures.
Her Many Names
Salomea Halpir was known by many different names! Her first name is often written as Salomea, Salome, or Salomėja. In her own memoir, she called herself Salomea. Her family name before marriage was Rusiecki, Rusiecka, Ruseckaitė, or Rusieckich.
Halpir or Halpirowa was her name from her first marriage. After her second marriage, she was known as Pilstein, Pilsztyn, Pilsztynowa, Pilštyniova, or Pichelstein. Even after her second marriage ended, she kept using her second husband's last name. She might have done this because it sounded more important. In her memoir, she used yet another last name: Makowska. Some people think this was from a third husband, but no one knows for sure where that name came from.
Her Life and Medical Journey
Salomea was born near Navahrudak in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Her family was part of the lower nobility. When she was just 14 years old, she married Dr. Jacob Halpir, a German eye doctor.
The couple moved to Constantinople, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. Dr. Halpir had a busy medical practice there, even with many other doctors around. Salomea, even though she didn't have formal schooling, learned a lot from her husband. She helped him with his operations and became a very good doctor herself. She became especially skilled at cataract surgery, which is an eye operation.
Because she was a woman, she was able to treat female patients. This was a special advantage in a place where local customs often limited how much women could interact with men. Her being a foreigner also helped her work around some of these traditions.
Later, her husband became sick and passed away. Salomea was left with their two-year-old daughter, Constance. After this, Salomea began traveling widely across Europe. During a war, she helped some Austrian prisoners of war. One of them, Ensign Pilstein, became her second husband.
She traveled to Poland, where a powerful noble named Michał Kazimierz "Rybeńko" Radziwiłł made her husband an officer. He also offered Salomea a job as a doctor in Nesvizh. Salomea even traveled to Saint Petersburg in Russia. There, she met important people like Empress Anna of Russia and the future Empress Elizabeth of Russia. After a few months, she returned to Poland.
She later moved to Vienna. She became a doctor for the women in the harem of Sultan Mustafa III in Constantinople. For a long time, no one knew what happened to her after 1760, when she finished her memoir. But a historian named Dariusz Kołodziejczyk discovered that in 1763, she was working as a doctor in the Khan's harem in Bakhchysarai. She also secretly shared information with the Russian consul there.
Her Autobiography
Salomea Halpir wrote a 388-page autobiography, which is a book about her own life. A Polish historian found it in the library of Prince Czartoryski. The book was published in Poland in 1957 with the title Proceder podróży i życia mego awantur, which means "My Life's Travels and Adventures."
Some of the stories in her memoir seem very unusual and hard to believe. For example, she wrote about her leg becoming weak and shorter because of a magic sign. Because of these kinds of stories, some people wonder if everything in her memoir is completely true. Some researchers think it might be more like a fictional story than a completely factual autobiography.
See also
In Spanish: Salomée Halpir para niños
