Salomée Halpir

Salomea Halpir (1718 – after 1763) while facing cut-throat competition from Jewish and Muslim doctors. Halpir was trained by her husband and assisted him in his operations eventually becoming an accomplished physician herself, Her status as a female helped her find a niche serving female patients and her status as a foreigner helped her skirt Islamic traditions that severely limited women's freedom.

Until recently, Salomea Halpir's life after 1760, when she completed her memoir, was unknown.

Autobiography

Halpir's 388-page autobiography was discovered by a Polish historian Glatman in the library of Prince Czartoryski. in Poland in 1957. A number of the events in the memoir seem far-fetched and implausible. For example, she described how her leg became limp and visibly shorter due to a magic omen. 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.