Tag: Mikhail Bulgakov
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Medical and literary coupling
Stephen FinnSouth Africa (To be read aloud, with gusto and with a strong beat) When you’re so busy in the middle of a ward,Or you’re doing the usual and feeling quite bored,Just think of your fellows who healed the sick,So many doctors, and what’d give them a kick. Denizens of medicine they all certainly were,But…
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Franz Kafka, A Country Doctor, (and Bob Dylan)
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Certainly doctors are stupid, or rather, they’re not more stupid than other people but their pretensions are ridiculous; [but] you have to reckon with the fact that they become more and more stupid the moment you come into their clutches . . .”— Franz Kafka1 Franz Kafka (1883–1924), a German speaking Czech,…
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The tracheotomy
Michelle Paff Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States The transformation of a medical student into a physician is depicted in the short story The Steel Windpipe (1925) by the Russian physician and author Mikhail Bulgakov. A young practitioner is stationed alone at a rural hospital, and one snowy evening he is approached by a woman with her dying…