Serbian Studies Vol. 23, No. 2 (2009)

This issue of the Serbian Studies is dedicated to Laza K. Lazarević (1851–91), a prominent Serbian medical doctor and writer. Lazarević was born in Šabac, to a merchant father, Kuzman, and a homemaker mother, Jelka. In 1860, Laza’s father died and his mother took care of her son and three daughters. After finishing high school in 1865, Lazarević went to Belgrade where he became a student in the Faculty of Law at Velika škola (Serbian School of Higher Education). There he was an admirer of Svetozar Marković, and translated Gogol’s “Diary of a Madman,” and a part of Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s novel, What Is To Be Done? In 1872, Laza K. Lazarević became a medical student in Berlin, where he earned a medical degree in 1879. In between he participated as a field doctor in the Serbo-Turkish War of 1876 and 1878, and later became the personal physician to Serbian king Milan Obrenović. Together with the first Serbian female doctor, Draga Ljočić (1855–1926), Lazarević voluntarily took care of female students. Read more of the full volume here.