The missing eye

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Mikhail Bulgakov around 1935

The missing eye ( Russian Пропавший глаз , Propawschi glas ) is a short story by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov , which appeared in 1926 in issues 36 and 37 of the Moscow magazine Medizinski rabotnik . The author added the text to his collection of Records from a Young Doctor .

The first-person narrator, a 24-year-old doctor, has been running the Murjewo village hospital for a year. He is supported by a field clerk and two midwives. Thirty weres away from the railroad, he has to forego collegial advice and help. Nevertheless, the results are impressive: 15,613 patients were treated. Of the two hundred on the ward, only six died. It was not until April that he gave birth on the bridge in the bushes. The young mother hadn't made the five werst long walk to the hospital. The father-in-law, that stupid miser, hadn't pulled out the horse and cart. And then the case of the man whose chest was torn to shreds from close range by Wolf's shot . The surgeon was able to leave Murjewo hospital after six weeks.

An event becomes an occasion to look back at the failures. What is meant is the difficult delivery of the village teacher's wife in Gristschewo. That was the second "twist on the foot". The doctor broke the fetus 's arm. The child was also born dead. The doctor still feels like a criminal afterwards. That wasn't the only mistake. Usually the field doctor pulls the patient's diseased tooth. When the Feldscher was away, the doctor who wanted to learn to pull teeth had tried his luck. In the process he broke out the tooth socket of a soldier who had returned from the crumbling front after the revolution . And then the forceps delivery . One failed. The child was born with only one eye. The doctor had put a forceps blade over the eye.

Now, at the beginning of the second year of service in Murjewo, a mother brings a one-year-old boy on a gray October morning. He only has one eye. In the place of the left a yellow ball swells - something like a small apple. The helpless doctor secretly puzzles: " Brain fracture ? Sarcoma ? ”And wants to cut open the horrible swelling. The mother does not allow the doctor to touch the left eye that was still there the day before yesterday and flees with her boy.

After a week, that young woman appears again in the consultation hour on her own account because she cannot breathe deeply. Your boy - again with two eyes - is there. The explanation: A huge pus was blowing out of the lower eyelid outgrown and the eye was covered. The doctor is prepared for more surprises at the beginning of his second year of service. He wants to learn in the future and hold back.

German-language editions

Output used:

  • The missing eye. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Reschke . Pp. 73-88 in Ralf Schröder (Ed.): Bulgakow. The red crown. Autobiographical stories and diaries. Volk & Welt, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-353-00944-2 (= Vol. 5: Collected Works (13 Vols.))

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Medizinski rabotnik - about employees in the health service
  2. ↑ Döderlein, 4th ed. Leipzig anno 1900: Guide to the obstetric surgery course online, p. 74 bottom to p. 89 in the Internet Archive
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 86 below
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 88, 3rd Zvu