Salomea Halpir

Instead of dedicating her life to raising children and being a good wife, as dictated by the 18th-century social norms, Halpir strove to become a successful medical doctor and expressed her hunger for travel and adventure.

[4] Halpir was born near Navahrudak, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, to the family of Joachim Rusiecki of petty nobility.

[5] The couple moved to Constantinople, Ottoman Empire, where Dr. Halpir practiced medicine and had many clients[6] while facing cut-throat competition from Jewish and Muslim doctors.

[4] Despite, or perhaps because of, her being a poorly educated Christian woman in an Islamic country,[4] Halpir was trained by her husband and assisted him in his operations eventually becoming an accomplished physician herself,[6] with a specialty in cataract surgery.

[3] She traveled to Poland where Michał Kazimierz "Rybeńko" Radziwiłł[3] made her husband an officer and offered her the position of doctor's residence in Nesvizh.

[4] Dariusz Kołodziejczyk has found that in 1763 she was employed as a physician in the Khan's harem in Bakhchysarai and as such she served as an informant of the Russian consul Aleksandr Nikiforov.

[6] The memoir was published as Proceder podróży i życia mego awantur (My Life's Travels and Adventures)[5] in Poland in 1957.

[3] Therefore, biographical accuracy of her memoir is disputed and some researchers prefer to treat it more as a work of fiction than a factual autobiography.