A rash like a constellation

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Mikhail Bulgakov around 1935

A rash like a constellation ( Russian Звёздная сыпь , Svjosdnaja syp ) is a short story by the Soviet writer Mikhail Bulgakov , which appeared in 1926 in issues 29 and 30 of the Moscow magazine Medizinski rabotnik . The author added the text to his collection of Records from a Young Doctor .

The narrator, a young doctor with a six-month practice depends in winter of the year 1918 in his village hospital in the Russian wilderness a syphilitic station and treated with increasing success the " star- like rash " of twelve patients of both sexes among others with Salvarsan Injections.

The syphilis story began with the 40-year-old patient A. Bukow. He only wanted the first-person narrator to gargle against hoarseness and had largely ignored the medical diagnosis of syphilis. After about a month, the desperate wife of the sick person comes to the young doctor's office. She has two children with the man who has traveled to Moscow and wants an answer to the question: Have we been infected by this “scoundrel”? The woman is lucky. After four months of observation and treatment, the doctor can give the all-clear.

The young doctor does not let go of the subject of syphilis. In the notes of his predecessor, he finds the case of 32-year-old Semjon Chotow, who was given mercury ointment on June 17, 1916 . Why does Semyon not audition? He died? The doctor wants to find him. Instead of Semyon, the 30-year-old Avdotja Karpova brings her two-year-old son Ivan Karpov to the clinic with this serious illness. The cases are increasing. A 70-year-old arrives, a youth, an old woman, and a woman in her prime. The doctor has to do something. He drives into town and applies for these patients to be admitted to his hospital.

German-language editions

Output used:

  • A rash like a constellation. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Reschke . Pp. 89-105 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. ↑ Edition used, p. 103, 11. Zvu to p. 104, 12. Zvo