102 not out - Heart Surgeon puts down scalpel
Published 20 October, 2007, 09:57
Fyodor Uglov may not be a familiar name outside of Russia, but he is one of the country's best known heart surgeons, and famous for being the oldest operating surgeon in the world. He continued performing complicated heart operations up to the age of 102.
His hands are still steady, but he can no longer operate after a stroke last year. Now he goes for long walks in the park, and spends hours flipping through old photographs.
Fyodor Uglov says his greatest achievement is that he has remained the same person throughout his life.
Born in a Siberian village in 1904, Fyodor was one of six children. Shortly after he arrived in the city Leningrad, the Second World War broke out. With the city besieged for 900 days, he saved hundreds of lives performing surgery, often with no anaesthetic, electricity or water.
A certificate from the Guinness Book of Records – one of dozens
With the war over, he joined one of Leningrad's most progressive hospitals as chief surgeon. He was almost fifty and had served in two wars by then, but his most remarkable achievements were still decades away.
A master diagnostician, he was able to operate on most internal organs. His virtuosity made him unique.
“He amazed us with his calm. It was deceptive. His hands moved so precisely that it seemed like he was operating very slowly, but actually the operations were completed very quickly,” recalls surgeon Vladimir Gritsenko, Uglov’s student.
No less surprising to his colleagues was that the older he became, the more he did. Thus, at 60 he married Emilia, a woman half his age.
An author of more than 600 articles, he published his first novel at 70. It immediately became a bestseller.
A lifetime teetotaller he started Russia's first independent anti-drinking organisations when he was 84.
Fyodor Uglov is now frail, and his memory is failing him. But the man who once wrote “A Century is not Enough”, will not be forgotten by those whose lives he saved.
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