Tag: Tracheotomy
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Dr. Mikhail Bulgakov and morphine
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “During the years of war and revolution it was hard to find a hospital without morphine-addicted patients.”1– Vladimir Gorovoy-Shaltan, physician specialist in addiction medicine Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (1891–1940) was a Russian physician, novelist, and playwright. He earned his medical degree from the University of Kiev (now Kyiv) in 1916. In 1919 he…
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Grumpy doctors and the short story
Tony MiksanekSouthern Illinois, United States This essay is based on a presentation made at the University of Iowa College of Medicine for the conference “The Examined Life: Writing and the Art of Medicine” on April 24, 2008. It isn’t always necessary to take the temperature of fictional physicians to know that they are hot. Three…
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High drama in the scullery
George DuneaChicago, IL This dramatic incident must have taken place around 1930, at a time when great controversy raged about the level at which a life-saving tracheotomy should be done. It is an extract from “High Tracheotomy Low Tracheostomy,” a lecture as given by Sir Clive Fitts at the Royal College of Physicians of London…
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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…