Salon

While lying in bed with a bad case of the flu, I thought about the intimate connection between medicine and literature in Russian life. There is, indeed, something similar in the vocation of a doctor and a writer -- perhaps an increased interest in the human condition. In Russia, the medical profession has always been one of the main sources of good authors -- starting from Dr. Anton Chekhov to Mikhail Bulgakov and up to the latest winner of the Open Russia Booker Prize, Vassily Aksyonov.

But what about medical literature in the more mundane sense, books about medicine, diseases, drugs and cures? In Soviet times, they were few and far between. Most households had a medical handbook of some kind, often the "Medical Encyclopedia," whose gruesome illustrations no doubt inspired many an impressionable child to diagnose themselves with every lethal disease. Another available genre was popular science books about the history of medicine, such as the American writer Paul de Kruif's excellent "Microbe Hunters."

With the collapse of the Soviet system, healthcare disintegrated as well. Gone were the annual checkups, which used to catch diseases in the early stages, and the prestige of the medical profession almost disappeared. Naturally, a surge of healers and charlatans ensued. Some readers may remember the perestroika-era miracle workers: Allan Chumak "charged" water on television, while Anatoly Kashpirovsky gave "directives" to his audiences, supposedly curing them of everything from baldness to cancer.

These days are long gone, but the number of self-help medical books, exotic diet plans and weird fitness techniques in today's bookstores is huge. For instance, a "blood group diet" promises to make its followers slim, fit and perfectly healthy. It has even spawned a number of cookbooks. Andrei Vorobyov, the director of Moscow's Hematological Scientific Center and a former health minister, has dubbed the diet plan "absolute rubbish."

Unfortunately, in a situation where professional medical care is unavailable or prohibitively expensive, it's only natural that folk remedies and psychics come to the rescue. A success story of recent years has been the "Healthy Lifestyle Bulletin" (Vestnik Zdorovogo Obraza Zhizni). Published by amateurs and consisting mostly of readers' letters about medical miracles, the monthly has a circulation of more than 3 million. One can only hope that people will not be deterred from seeking professional help by the promise of miracles, herbs and prayer.