About the book: 2019 / Veresaev’s literary debut. An autobiographical book that first saw the light in 1901 - and immediately brought wide fame to the young author. The first steps of a freshly baked aesculapian starting his journey in the medical field. Good luck and bad luck. A painful fear of a mistake that could kill an innocent patient. Stress. Despair. Pride of success. Dangerous and morally questionable, but necessary experiments on humans in the search for new treatments. The appearance of female doctors is a sensation and a scandal. The eternal misfortune of Russia is the passion for self-medication and “treatment,” as they would say now, with “non-traditional” methods. What is it anyway, this life of a young, aspiring doctor? Feat - or martyr's cross? Veresaev asks this question again and again - and cannot find an answer to it.