Gisela Januszewska

Having earned her degree in Switzerland, she briefly worked in Germany before becoming the first female physician in the ethnically Serbian town of Banja Luka in Bosnia Herzegovina within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

[1] Having gained her first experience in the obstetrics volunteering at the Women's Hospital in Zürich, Januszewska moved in June 1898 to Remscheid, German Empire, and became an insurance doctor for Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse.

[2] In March 1899, she was appointed Amtsärztin, a public health official, in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka,[2] becoming its first female physician.

[3] During her career in Banja Luka, Januszewska was one of few physicians who strove to ensure that Bosnian Muslim women had proper access to healthcare.

[1][2] She performed minor surgeries[3] and gained fame treating patients with smallpox, typhoid, typhus and syphilis, but most of all osteomalacia (the last being especially rampant among Muslim women, according to Teodora Krajewska, another physician in Bosnia at the time).

[1] Januszewska received several medals for her services, including German Red Cross Decoration and the Austrian Order of the Civil Merit.