{"id":7,"date":"2017-03-06T23:32:31","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T23:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/?p=7"},"modified":"2018-04-22T22:31:47","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T21:31:47","slug":"suppose-they-bring-me-a-hernia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottishmedicalhumanities.org\/human\/suppose-they-bring-me-a-hernia\/","title":{"rendered":"Suppose they bring me a hernia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forty-eight days ago I qualified \u2018with distinction\u2019; 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?<\/p>\n

Worse, they brought a dreadfully injured young girl, only daughter of a devastated widower.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is it. Oh why did I ever come?<\/p>\n

Her calico skirt was torn and stained with blood. The light of the kerosene lamp was a lively yellow in comparison with her paper-white face, and her nose was beginning to sharpen.<\/p>\n

\u2018Die. Die quickly,\u2019 I said to myself. \u2018Otherwise what am I to do with you?\u2019.<\/p>\n

She lay like a corpse, but did not die. Suddenly my head became quite clear.<\/p>\n

I suddenly became aware without any textbooks, without any advice or help, that now, for the first time in my life, I had to perform an amputation on a dying person.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mikhail Bulgakov, <\/strong>from A Country Doctor’s Notebook.<\/em><\/p>\n

Commentary<\/h3>\n

A newly qualified doctor is sent from urban Moscow to be the only doctor in remote Muryovo Hospital. A Country Doctor\u2019s Notebook<\/em> is a collection of stories drawn from the early experience of Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) after his graduation from Kiev in 1916. The stories were published in journals 1925-7, and only rediscovered after his death.<\/p>\n

Bulgakov subsequently gave up medicine for writing, becoming a successful novelist and playwright in difficult times in Stalin\u2019s Russia.<\/p>\n

A Country Doctor\u2019s Notebook<\/em> was translated into English by Michael Glenny in 1975. It reads as fresh as if in a magazine today. It is often cited as one of the core medical humanities texts.<\/p>\n

Further info<\/h3>\n