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"I am but an average practitioner. I am about to describe my sensations on my first acquaintance with medicine, what I expected of it, and how it actually affected me. I will endeavour to set down all , hiding nothing, and I will strive to write with absolute frankness." These words, written by the 33 year old Russian physician Vikenty Veresaev, introduced his book Zapiski vracha (Memoirs of a Physician ).
Vikenty Vikentievich Smidovich (Veresaev was his pen name) was born in 1867 in Tula, a provincial city 200 km south of Moscow, into a doctor's family. On qualifying Veresaev worked as a resident doctor in St Petersburg and joined a Marxist literary circle. In 1901 he was fired from his hospital job by order of the city governor, and by decree of the minister of internal affairs he was prohibited from living in St Petersburg or Moscow for two years. That year Veresaev published...