“It seems that I have appendicitis. I am keeping quiet about it, even smiling. Why frighten my friends? Who could be of help? A polar explorer’s only encounter with medicine is likely to have been in a dentist’s chair.”
Dr. Leonid Rogozov had landed on the ice shelf at Princess Astrid Coast, Antarctica, in December 1960, as part of a team of thirteen Soviet scientists and researchers tasked with building a new base, Novolazarevskaya Station, and spending the winter there. By the time they finished construction eight weeks later, the sea had frozen over, the ship that had dropped them off was long gone, and temperatures were falling toward their winter average of -7º Fahrenheit.
On the morning of April 29, 1961, twenty-seven-year-old Rogozov crawled out of bed feeling cruddy. Just two years removed from earning his medical degree, he’d jumped at the chance to work in Antarctica, interrupting advanced training in surgery to join the 6th Soviet Antarctic Expedition as its only medical
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