The Steel Windpipe

A dying child in rural Russia in 1916, by Mikhail Bulghakov. At eleven o’clock that night a little girl was brought. The mother’s face was contorted with noiseless weeping. When she had thrown off her sheepskin coat and shawl and unwrapped the bundle, I saw a little girl of about three years old. For a Read More …

Suppose they bring me a hernia

Forty-eight days ago I qualified ‘with distinction’; but distinction is one thing and hernia is another. Once I watched a professor operating on a strangulated hernia. He did it, while I sat in the amphitheatre. Suppose they bring me a hernia? Worse, they brought a dreadfully injured young girl, only daughter of a devastated widower. Read More …