This story recalls the twenty-four year-old Bulgakov's arrival in remote Muryovo as a newly (barely) qualified doctor. He worries incessantly about the possibility of getting a patient with peritonitis, or worse, a child with croup. His first patient turned out to be a girl who'd had a disastrous farming accident requiring amputaton. I don't know if his skill as a doctor matched his own low opinion but his writing ability is superb.

This is one of his semi-autobiographical stories published in periodicals in the 1920s and published posthumously as a collection in 1963 with the title [A Country Doctor's Notebook] that I heartily recommend.

Bulgakov was born in Kiev, Ukraine and studied medicine at Kiev University. ( )