A White Doctor Goes to Africa

By Brendan FohtMarch 29, 2021

“I am departing totally convinced,” the great Russian playwright Anton Chekhov wrote to a professional acquaintance in March of 1890, “that my trip will yield a valuable contribution neither to literature nor to science.” Chekhov prepared to leave for Sakhalin Island, a distant part of the Russian Empire north of Japan filled with convicts and criminal exiles. If this trip would offer nothing to literature or science, what could Chekhov, a physician and member of the literati, gain from this sojourn? He knew he would see suffering and pain there, the nadir of human existence. Why descend on that path?... The post A White Doctor Goes to Africa appeared first on The New Atlantis.

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