A short survey of the epic expedition into the depths of the Siberian Taiga in 1891 made by Kate Marsden, a British Nurse devoted her life to alleviating sufferings of lepers round the world.  

 

Studying the history of nursing one can come across lots of outstanding examples of selfless devotion in bringing help to the people suffering from poverty, wars, and diseases. One of the most remarkable feats made by nurses in the nineteenth century was an outstanding expedition of a British nurse Kate Marsden into the remotest part of the East Siberian taiga to investigate living conditions of lepers among the Yakut people, an ethnic minority that lived deep in the forests. This journey, the details of which sound astonishing even today, more than 110 years later, gave a powerful impetus for setting up a colony for the lepers near the Yakut settlement of Vilyuisk and made the top authorities of the Russian Empire reconsider their approach to the problem of treating lepers. 

 

Kate Marsden was born in London in 1859. At the age of  16, she started working as a nurse in one of the hospitals in London outskirts. During the Russian-Turkish War in 1877, she, together with a few other British nurses, joined the Red Cross mission in Bulgaria and provided care of the sick and wounded Russian soldiers in the field hospitals. Working hard shoulder-to-shoulder with other nurses in Russian hospitals, she gained a reputation of an unreservedly self-denying person and was granted a special award by Russian Empress Maria Fedorovna for her devoted labor.

 

In Bulgaria she first saw lepers. One day, exploring the countryside near Sistov in order to find a suitable place for setting a camp for the wounded soldiers transported form the battlefields, she came into a small hut where she met two people whose bodies had been disfigured by leprosy. Miss Marsden was so impressed by the terrifying effects of the disease that she decided to devote her future life to alleviating sufferings of lepers.

 

On her return to England Kate Marsden wanted to set off immediately to one of the British colonies to organize a mission for helping lepers, but her relatives convinced her not to go. She continued working as a nurse, visiting the sick in the most underprivileged areas in London and Liverpool and she also had to take care of her sisters and brothers suffering from consumption. 

 

In 1890 she read a newspaper article on leprosy in India that described poor state of more than 250 000 lepers there and pointed to the lack of proper care of them. Very much impressed by this article, Kate Marsden decided to go to India and set up a charity organization there. She started raising funds and applied to the British Royal family. Queen Victoria and Princess Alexandra supported the idea and provided some assistance. Seeking more patronage, Kate Marsden went to St. Petersburg and applied to Russian Empress Maria Fedorovna, Princess Alexandra’s sister and Danish Princess Dagmar before marriage, whose charitable activity was well known throughout Europe. Having received the Russian Empress’ benediction and support, Miss Marsden traveled to Palestine, Egypt, Cyprus and Constantinople and visited colonies for lepers there in order to learn more about the state of leprosy treatment and available care. In Constantinople, she met an English doctor who claimed that a certain herb that had a curative effect on leprosy existed somewhere in Siberia, though the Siberian Yakuts kept this herb in secret. Excited with this news, Kate Marsden rushed to St. Petersburg again in November 1890 and applied to the Russian Empress with an idea of organizing an expedition to Siberia in order to provide care for the lepers among Siberian Yakuts, find the herb there and bring the cure to hundreds of thousands of lepers in other countries. Maria Fedorovna met Miss Mardens’ initiative of such a venture with great sympathy and provided necessary funds for the expedition. Besides, the Empress equipped her with a writ of Her Majesty’s protection, and the, so-called, open list - a letter to the Siberian governors, prescribing them to provide every possible support for Miss Marsden’s mission and to cover any additional expenses on her way.

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