Before us is the history of a person’s illness, traced by the author with medical care in order to warn those young people who may unwisely become addicted to drugs and ultimately destroy themselves. Such works are scary to read. This is a medical history. Yes, a disease, a terrible disease, with careful recording of all its stages. The torment and struggle of a weak mind with the tenacious claws of drug addiction are described. In the late autumn of 1917, when there was turmoil all around and the fires of revolution were burning everywhere, 23-year-old Doctor Polyakov was appointed to a rural hospital in the city of N. He was still very young for a doctor, and had just graduated from medical school, but the difficulties did not matter. From the very beginning of Polyakov’s medical practice, he was haunted by difficulties. Struggling with diphtheria and its complications, a young doctor loses his first patient. However, Polyakov’s life is also in danger, and in order to avoid it, the young doctor injects himself with serum in the hope of not getting infected from the patient. By the evening, unbearable pain awaits him, which he copes with thanks to nurse Anna and an anesthetic injection of morphine. Despite the known narcotic effect, Polyakov asks to repeat the injection, and then secretly prescribes morphine for himself for medicinal purposes. Along the way, there are signs of improvement in his medical practice, but the complex operations performed increase the burden on Polyakov, forcing him to take the drug more and more often.
