Saint Luka (Voyno-Yasenetsky)

Valentin Felixovich Voyno-Yasenetsky (Russian: Валенти́н Фе́ликсович Во́йно-Ясене́цкий; 27 April [O.S. 15 April] 1877 – 11 June 1961) – now known as Luke of Simferopol, Saint Luke the Blessed Surgeon, or Saint Luke of Crimea – was a Russian surgeon, spiritual writer, a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, and archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea from May 1946 until his death. He was a laureate of the Stalin Prize in medicine in 1946. Valentin Voyno-Yasenetsky was born in 1877 in Kerch. In 1889, his family moved to Kiev. In Kiev, he graduated from the gymnasium and art school, then Valentin entered the medical faculty of Kiev University. Then he met the sister of mercy Anna Vasilyevna Lanskaya, whom he married, and they had two children. In 1917, Anna fell ill with tuberculosis, and the family moved to Tashkent. But in 1919, Anna Voyno-Yasenetskaya died. In 1921, Voyno-Yasenetsky became a priest, then took the name Luke, later became a bishop. After the war, he was awarded the medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945". In 1955, Luke became completely blind. His most important work in medicine is Sketches of Purulent Surgery (1934). This is still a reference book and a manual for surgeons. Also, he operated patients who had diseases of the gall bladder, stomach, and other organs of the abdominal cavity, and worked in neurosurgery and orthopedics. Voyno-Yasenetsky made a great contribution to anesthesiology. His first monograph, Regional anesthesiology, was published in 1915 in Petrograd. In 1916 he defended a thesis About regional anesthesiology of the second branch of the trigeminal nerve. He wrote about the practical importance of the regional anesthesia method in the attachment to the Essays of purulent surgery. "... a great amount of death is due to unskillful or careless use of chloroform and ether. [...] That's why these methods of local anaesthesia which help doctors pay attention only to the operation have a great importance.