17 Facts About Anna Kuliscioff

Anna Kuliscioff was mainly active in Italy, where she was one of the first women to graduate in medicine.

Anna Kuliscioff was born Anna Moiseevna Rozenstejn in 1857 near Simferopol, in Crimea.

Anna Kuliscioff was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family of merchants who guaranteed her a happy and dedicated childhood, so much so that she attended courses in philosophy at the University of Zurich in Switzerland.

Anna Kuliscioff was endowed with an extraordinary memory and an exceptional predisposition to logical and rigorous reasoning.

In 1871, after studying foreign languages with private tutors, Anna Kuliscioff was sent to study engineering at the Zurich Polytechnic, where she additionally took courses in philosophy.

Anna Kuliscioff escaped from Odessa to live clandestinely, first in Kiev and then in Kharkov, frequently singing in public parks to make money.

An activist for causes such as women's suffrage, Anna Kuliscioff was tried and imprisoned on several occasions.

The last years of Anna Kuliscioff's life were marked by much bitterness, many health problems, splits within the Socialists, and the rise of the Fascist Party.

Anna Kuliscioff first went to the city of Turin where she met Cesare Lombroso and his daughters Paola and Gina and then to the city of Pavia, in 1885, where she attended one of the most prestigious laboratories, the one of the future Nobel laureate Camillo Golgi.

Anna Kuliscioff decided to prepare her graduation thesis focusing into a particularly demanding field such as epidemiology, devoting herself to the study of the pathogenesis of puerperal fevers which represented one of the main female causes of death: a particularly stimulating field of research and in clear development both as a result of the discoveries of microbiology and the appearance, in Italy, of significant developments of a political nature in hygienic rehabilitation.

Anna Kuliscioff concluded her thesis with the audacious hypothesis that the agent of the infection is to be identified not so much in a streptococcus, as supposed by Louis Pasteur, but in microorganisms of another nature, the proteins of putrefaction.

Anna Kuliscioff tried to get hired as a doctor at the Maggiore Hospital, but she was rejected because she was a woman.

Anna Kuliscioff was truly admired for her work; her daily visits were expected as a blessing, in fact it was not a visit from a doctor, it was something more.

Anna Kuliscioff was considered a comforter, a friend, trustworthy woman of those who suffered and their beloved.

Anna Kuliscioff's patients described her as a woman who was able to penetrate the depths of souls.

Anna Kuliscioff did not dedicate her care only to the poor, in fact, even the ladies of the bourgeoisie entrusted themselves to her care.

Anna Kuliscioff retired to her home where she continued her lively political militancy.