Photo: Archive od Ilona Borská / Wikimedia Commons, public domain
The name Vlasta Kálalová Di Lotti might not mean very much to you – even many Czechs have not heard of her. But the woman with the exotic-sounding name was decidedly one of the most fascinating figures of the First Republic and had an incredible life story that deserves to be more widely known. Not only a female surgeon at a time when this was extremely uncommon, she was also intrepid and pioneering, setting up a clinic in Iraq in the 1920s, and was said to have been fluent in over a dozen languages.
Most of what is now known about Vlasta Kálalová Di Lotti comes from a single book – Doktorka z domu Trubačů or The Doctor from the Trubač Family House, by the now-deceased biographer Ilona Borská. Jana Renner, who a few years ago published a book about pioneering Czech women who made their mark on history, which of course included the story of Vlasta Kálalová Di Lotti, told Radio Prague that reading Di Lotti’s story in Ilona Borská’s biographical novel had made an impression on her as a young girl.
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Author: Anna Fodor, Source:Český rozhlas