ROMANOV FAMILY PHYSICIAN: DR EVGENY BOTKIN
Recently the decision to canonize the Romanov family physician, Dr. Evgeny Sergeevich Botkin, was taken at a meeting of the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church. Based on this decision Botkin, who voluntarily followed the Romanov family into exile and was murdered along with them, has been glorified as a righteous martyr.
Dr. Botkin, the personal physician of the Romanov family was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad back in 1981, along with the servants of the last Russian emperor’s family, who were shot along with them: the cook Ivan Kharitonov, Footman Aloise Trupp, and maid Anna Demidova.
Evgeny Botkin was the fourth child in a family of a well-known Russian physician in the court of Tsars Alexander II and Alexander III, Sergei Botkin. In 1889 Evegeny graduated from the Military Medical Academy. In 1904 he was appointed head of the medical department of the Russian Red Cross Society in the Manchurian army. He was awarded the officers’ military orders: St. Vladimir 2nd and 3rd degree with swords, St. Anne’s 2nd degree, St. Stanislaus 3rd degree, Serbian Order of St. Savva 2nd degree and a Bulgarian – “for Civil Merits”. At the request of the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, he was appointed the personal physician of the Romanov family in April 1908.
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