The body under the sheet, lying on the dissection table in the ‘Anatomical Theater’ exhibition hall of the Military Medical Museum, is a movie prop — a silicone doll. It was used by the film crew of the director Alexey Balabanov while working on the film ‘Morphine’ in 2008.
The film was based on the cycle of stories by Mikhail Bulgakov ‘A Young Doctor’s Notebook’ and the story “Morphine”. The script was written by Sergey Bodrov Jr. in 1999.
In the story, which starts in the fall of 1917, a young doctor Mikhail Polyakov is appointed to a post of a zemstvo (country) doctor in a rural hospital. There, the main character unsuccessfully tries to save a patient with diphtheria, he has to deliver a baby, as well as to treat inflammation, and for the first time in his practice, he carries out complex surgeries.
In winter, a peasant girl, who had got into a flax breaker, was taken to the hospital where Polyakov worked. The machine crushed the girl’s legs. An employee at the zemstvo hospital, paramedic Anatoly Lukich doubted the success of the surgery and feared for the patient’s life. However, Dr. Polyakov insisted on amputation of the right leg and successfully performed the surgery.
Body on the dissection table
Creation period
2006
Dimensions
50x165x70 cm
Technique
silicone
Collection
Exhibition
3
Open in app#4
Body on the dissection table
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#5
Only my common sense was working on my behalf, driven on by the extraordinariness of the situation. With an extremely sharp knife, like an experienced butcher, I made a deft, circular slash around the hip, and the skin parted without producing a single droplet of blood. ‘What will I do if the vessels start bleeding? ’ I thought, and cast sidelong looks, like a wolf, at a heap of torsion forceps. I cut off an enormous morsel of female meat with one of the blood vessels — it was in the form of a little whitish tube — but not a drop of blood came out of it. I clamped it with torsion forceps and moved on. I clipped the torsion forceps on everywhere that I assumed there to be blood vessels… ‘Arteria… arteria… What the devil’s the name?…’ The operating room began to look like a clinic. Torsion forceps hung in bunches. They were pulled up and out of the way, along with the meat, with gauze, and with a dazzling, finely serrated saw I began sawing the round bone. “Why doesn”t she die?… It”s amazing… oh, how a person clings to life!
Mikhail Bulgakov “A Young Doctor”s Notebook”
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The left leg was put in a cast, and its amputation was avoided. Having recovered from the surgery, the peasant girl came to thank Polyakov, who had saved her life, and gave him an embroidered towel.
The amputation scene turned out to be very realistic. While working on this episode, the actress was replaced with a silicone doll with elaborate leg injuries.
The amputation scene turned out to be very realistic. While working on this episode, the actress was replaced with a silicone doll with elaborate leg injuries.
#3
Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation
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Body on the dissection table
Creation period
2006
Dimensions
50x165x70 cm
Technique
silicone
Collection
Exhibition
3
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