fossil_digger Report This Comment Date: March 31, 2013 03:22AM
In 1961, Rogozov was stationed at a newly constructed Russian base in
Antarctica. The 12 men inside were cut off from the outside world by the polar
winter by March of that year. In April, the 27-year-old Rogozov began to feel
ill, very ill. His symptoms were classic: he had acute appendicitis. “He knew
that if he was to survive he
had to undergo an operation,” the British Medical Journal recounted. “But
he was in the frontier conditions of a newly founded Antarctic colony on the
brink of the polar night. Transportation was impossible. Flying was out of the
question, because of the snowstorms. And there was one further problem: he was
the only physician on the base.”