A Country Doctor's Notebook (edition 1995)

A set of two short stories, about medical life in the early days of the Soviet Union.

The first - actually a collection of even shorter stories, collected together - details the collision of a young doctor, fresh out of medical school, and the crushing responsibilities of being a physician - as well as being in the middle of nowhere, where electricity and drugs are still strange and mysterious things. Funny and tragic in equal measure. Frank in its honesty, and likely semi-autobiographical. Recalls Chekhov.

The second story, entitled Morphine, is about a different physician's struggle with an addiction to morphine, whose opioid cousins still inflict havoc on the visions and lives of many today.

A fine collection of stories from one of my favorite authors. A quick read, and one that stays with you. ( )

In the winter of 1916, the author Mikhail Bulgakov was a newly minted general practitioner, sent to a remote, rural medical clinic to be the region's sole doctor. This sink or swim method of internship was common in Russia at the time, due in part to the exigency of the ongoing Civil War and the desperate need for medical care in rural areas. Bulgakov spent eighteen months there, then specialized in venereology and moved to Kiev. Another eighteen months later, the Civil War forced him into the Caucasus where he left medicine in favor of writing; his most famous novel being [The Master and Margarita]. This book is a fictionalized account of his time as a young doctor in the rural hinterlands. Each chapter could exist on its own as a short story, yet they read chronologically as a novel.

The opening chapter, The Embroidered Towel, recounts young Dr. Bomgard's arrival at his post after a grueling twenty-four hour sleigh trip from the nearest town.

If you have never driven over country roads it is useless for me to tell you about it; you wouldn't understand anyway. But if you have, I would rather not remind you of it.

He is met by his staff: a minimally trained assistant called a feldsher and two midwives. Feeling completely isolated and unprepared for his life here, the doctor finally falls asleep in his new quarters.

I don't remember him arriving. I only remember the bolt grating in the door, a shriek from Aksinya and a cart creaking out in the yard.

He was hatless, his sheepskin coat unbuttoned, his beard was dishevelled and there was a mad look in his eyes.

He crossed himself, fell on his knees and banged his forehead against the floor. This to me!

'I'm a lost man,' I thought wretchedly.

It is a difficult case. The man's daughter has fallen into the flax brake, a machine for separating the woody stem from the fibrous part of the flax. If she is to live, she needs an amputation. But if she were to die during the procedure, a likely outcome, her body would be cut for naught. What to do?

This initial story sets the tone for most of the book. Ironic and funny, yet graphic in the descriptions of contemporaneous medicine and the Russian peasant's life: a life filled with superstition, fatalism, and stoicism. The doctor, straight from Moscow, is appalled at the ignorance and compares it to darkness in the third chapter, Black as Egypt's Night. The chapter ends with the thoughts of the doctor as he falls asleep.

'No, I will fight it... I will... I...' After a hard night, sweet sleep overtook me. Darkness, black as Egypt's night, descended and in it I was standing alone, armed with something that might have been a sword or might have been a stethoscope. I was moving forward and fighting... somewhere at the back of beyond. But I was not alone. With me was my warrior band: Demyan Lukich, Anna Nikolaevna, Pelagea Ivanova, all dressed in white overalls, all pressing forward.

Sleep... what a boon...

I enjoyed this book in all its moods: humorous, insightful, tragic. I loved the transition of the bumbling, inexperienced young doctor to a man more at home within himself and having a more nuanced understanding of his profession and human nature. My one caution is that Bulgakov does write with the biases of a man of his time and station. However, if you don't mind reading about medical procedures, I would highly recommend this book. ( )

Après ses études de médecine dans sa ville natale de Kiev, Boulgakov fut envoyé dans un village retiré de la province de Smolensk, afin d'y diriger un hôpital de campagne. C'est cette expérience qui est relatée ici. A travers l'anecdote et le souvenir, c'est toute la Russie pathétique et millénaire qui surgit. Une occasion d'approcher une époque, un pays et un de ses meilleurs écrivains dans ses seuls écrits autobiographiques.

Mikhail Bulgakov, most famous as the author of The Master and Margarita, originally trained as a doctor and was sent, in 1916, just out of medical school, to be the sole doctor at a remote hospital way off in the country because Russia was short of doctors as most had been drafted into the military. In this semi-autobiographical collection of stories, he vividly portrays the wildness of the country (the snow, the wind, the wolves), the abject ignorance and superstition of the local people, and most movingly the fears of a doctor who knows he doesn't know enough for the job into which he has been thrust. This book is lightweight compared to Bulgakov's later work, some of the medical scenes were a little too realistic for me, and the last story was a little politically self-serving, but all in all I enjoyed the collection and the insight into a young doctor's psyche.

Before Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) became a full-time writer and author of the classic The Master and Margarita, he was a young doctor treating impoverished rural Russian peasants. His experiences as a country doctor - no electricity, overworked and under supplied - formed the basis of a series of essays first published in an obscure Russian magazine between 1925-27. Humorous, dark and literary, the collection offers a glimpse into modern medicine meeting Medieval superstition. Dramatic and fun, eye opening and shocking, laughable and pitiful, the patients and the doctor somehow seem to survive a cultural divide of 500 years. Great reading, highly recommended.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2010 cc-by-nd ( )