Anna Tomaszewicz-Dobrska – Polona Archive, National Library – Photographer unknown. Portrait from Cecylia Walewska’s book “In the fight for equal rights: our fighters” from 1930, a chapter about Anna Tomaszewicz-Dobrska.
Cover – Doctor Anna novels Author Albena Grabowska – Marginesy Publishing House – Warsaw 2021 First Edition – Hippocrates’ Disciples series
About the author –
Albena Grabowska is a writer known to Polish readers, who is also a neurologist and doctor of medical sciences. She spent most of her life dealing primarily with patients struggling with epilepsy, but for almost a decade she has also been making a literary career. Its most popular publication is the “Winful Century” saga, on the basis of which a great series with well-known Polish actors was made.
Book description
“Doctor Anna” by Albena Grabowska will take readers to the scientific world of the decline of positivism. In the book, we meet doctor Anna in the late 1870s, when she returns from Switzerland after her studies to open her medical practice in Warsaw.
Albena Grabowska’s book is not only a great picture of the era from the perspective of a woman, but also a lot of references to historical figures who had a great impact on the world of science and medicine. The young doctor is qualified to heal and wants to do so, but in those times it is not enough. The Medical Society welcomes only men with open arms.
Although the ubiquitous lack of hygiene results in numerous diseases and more and more people need help, Dr. Anna has to try twice as hard to start working in her chosen profession. The novel shows an extremely complicated model of an era in which development and numerous inventions have become the signs of the times, and at the same time numerous prejudices and obscurantism have not been eliminated.