Why was the surgeon V.F. Voyno-Yasenetsky canonized?

Abstract

Surely everyone has heard of Saint Luke the Blessed Surgeon, whose name is given to many scientific and medical institutions, medical universities and colleges, treatment and diagnostic centers. The Institute of Pediatric and Adult Neurology and Epilepsy in Moscow, the Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, and the International Educational Center for Medical Institutions bear his name. Do you know that the famous surgeon Valentin Feliksovich Voyno-Yasenetsky and Saint Luke the Blessed Surgeon are one and the same person, and that he lived and worked not in ancient times, but under the Soviet Union? An outstanding scientist, PhD in Medicine, professor, laureate of the Stalin Prize V.F. Voyno-Yasenetsky made a huge contribution to the development of surgery, including purulent surgery. He wrote about 60 scientific papers, and many of the works were accompanied by his own drawings. He was awarded the Stalin Prize of the first degree for Essays on Purulent Surgery and Late Resections for Gunshot Wounds of the Joints. These monographs were a necessary and timely scientific and practical guide in all base and field hospitals during the Great Patriotic War. In this work, the anatomical and topographic principle of the study of suppurative processes, first put forward by N.I. Pirogov, was consistently highlighted. Over the years, the monograph has not lost its relevance; it remains of interest to neurosurgeons, ophthalmologists, dentists, urologists, and doctors of other specialties. The author of these books was PhD in Medicine, a scientist, surgeon, teacher and artist, who took holy orders in the most terrible years of persecution of the church, in 1921. For the courageous confession of Orthodoxy, he was repeatedly arrested. He spent many years in prisons and camps, but he always remembered the high calling of a doctor. While healing the body, he also healed spiritual wounds, and he never betrayed any of his callings.