: The young doctor ends up in a rural hospital, where he has to take a hundred people a day, perform complex operations alone, fight diseases, ignorance and his own cowardice.
The narration is on behalf of a young doctor, whose name is not mentioned. The action takes place in 1917-1918.
Towel with a cock
A young doctor who recently graduated from the university was sent to work in the remote village of Muryevo.
Goodbye, goodbye for a long time, gold-red Bolshoi Theater, Moscow, shop windows ... oh, goodbye.
There were two doctors in the hospital, but the doctor became the main and only doctor. The young man was not confident in himself and was afraid of severe cases, especially amputation.
Ironically, he got such an incident on the very first evening after his arrival. A beautiful girl fell into a flax ball. The frightened doctor amputated her leg, not hoping that she would survive until the morning.
The girl survived. In gratitude, she presented the doctor with a towel with an embroidered red rooster that adorned his bedroom for many years.
Steel throat
The doctor worked on the N-site in the village of Muryevo for forty-eight days.
I really wanted to run away from my point ... But there was no way to escape, but at times I myself understood that it was cowardice.After all, for this I studied at the Faculty of Medicine ...
At the end of November, a three-year-old girl with diphtheria was brought to him. The girl was panting and was almost dying. The doctor decided on a complicated operation and inserted a steel tube in her throat so that she could breathe. The girl survived. There was a rumor in the district that the doctor had inserted a steel throat for the child, and people came from distant villages to look at the girl.
Winter storm
After a successful amputation, the doctor became famous throughout the district, hundreds of patients came to him every day. A second doctor was not sent to the site, and the deadly tired doctor continued to treat.
A blizzard began, and the hospital was empty, but the doctor could not rest - he was called for help by a colleague from a neighboring site. The case was difficult: the groom decided to ride the bride on a sleigh, the horse moved too abruptly and the girl hit her head hard on the door jamb.
The doctor could not help, the girl died. The sick were waiting for him, and he decided to return despite the blizzard. On the way, the doctor and the charioteer got lost, found a way with difficulty, and escaped from a pair of wolves.
Asleep, the doctor swore to himself that he would not go anywhere else in such weather, but deep down he understood that he would never refuse to help.
Baptism by turn
The young doctor began to get used to life on the N-th site. Until now, he did not accept childbirth and was very afraid that he would get a difficult case. Once, a woman in labor with a transverse position of the fetus was brought to the Muryev hospital. The doctor rushed through the textbook on obstetrics and was completely confused.
He was saved by an experienced midwife, who suggested that you need to make a "turn on the leg" - to turn the fetus in the mother’s uterus. In ten minutes, she explained how the experienced predecessor of the doctor performed this operation.
The operation was successful, the mother and child survived, and the doctor realized that real knowledge comes only with experience.
Egyptian darkness
The doctor celebrated his twenty-four years in the company of a medical assistant and midwives. Outside the windows of the hospital, cold, snow and "Egyptian darkness" reigned. The guests recalled cases from practice related to the ignorance of peasants and village superstitions.
That same night, the miller, who seemed to the doctor a clever man, entered the Muryev hospital with fever. He prescribed quinine to the patient, one powder a day, but the miller, in order not to mess around, drank all ten powders at once and almost died.
Having pumped out the miller, the doctor vowed to himself always fight against ignorance, this "Egyptian darkness."
Star rash
The young doctor worked in the Muryev hospital for six months, but he had never come across syphilis patients. The first such patient was a guy of about forty, who did not believe that he was sick with a "bad disease" and did not begin to be treated.
Then came a woman who believed that her husband had infected her. She was one of the few who were truly afraid of this infection. The doctor examined her for four months and found out that by some miracle the woman was not infected.
All these four months, the doctor leafed through old outpatient books.
It turned out that syphilis is the scourge of these places, whole families hurt them, but no one was afraid of this disease and was not treated.The doctor decided to fight this infection and made sure that a special department was opened in the Muryev hospital.
The first patient of the department was a woman with three young children. The doctor was delighted to watch a star rash disappear from the bodies of children - the first sign of syphilis.
Missing eye
The doctor worked on the N-th site for a year. He matured, gained experience and shaved now only once a week. More often it was not possible to shave - as soon as the doctor laid out the shaving accessories, he was called to the patient.
For a year, he learned to take birth of any complexity, to make amputations, to suture hernias and to tear his teeth. The first tooth he pulled out turned out to be a piece of bone. The doctor decided that he had broken his jaw and was tormented by remorse for a long time, until a more experienced colleague explained that he had broken out not a piece of bone, but a tooth hole.
As soon as the doctor was sure that he had seen everything and knew everything, they brought a child with a huge tumor instead of an eye to him. The doctor decided that his eyes were gone and that the tumor should be excised, but his mother refused the operation.
A week later, the doctor saw the same child with two healthy eyes. It turned out that the tumor was a huge abscess that closed his eyes. Pus leaked out and a missing eye appeared.
No. Never, even falling asleep, I will not mumble proudly that you will not surprise me. No. And a year has passed, another year will pass and will be as rich in surprises as the first ... So, you need to learn docilely.
The Notes of the Young Doctor also include the stories Morphine and I Killed, but formally they are not included in the cycle.
