世界上每年都有数以百万计的人患心肌梗塞症,仅在联邦德国每年就有15万人之多。近10年来,由于采用了新的诊断和治疗方法,使患有此症的人的生存率有了明显的提高。有件轶事极富于传奇色彩,简直就象小说中描述的情节:一位年青的助理医生想在自己的胳膊上切开一根血管,然后顺着它把一根细橡皮导管徐徐移向心脏。他要用的导管和手术器械只能来自一位年青的女护士。他事先对她保守秘密,并对自己实验的重要意义深信不移。这位姑娘同意充当实验者的角色。她注视着这位助理医生在他自己身上成功地完成了“心脏导管插入手术”。这件事听起来令人难以置信,但毕竟是发生在1929年距柏林不远的埃伯斯瓦尔德省医院里的千真万确的事 Millions of people in the world suffer from myocardial infarction every year, up to 150,000 each year in the Federal Republic of Germany alone. The past 10 years, due to the introduction of new diagnostic and therapeutic methods, so that people with this disease have significantly improved the survival rate. Astonishingly legendary, anecdote is as much akin to what the novel describes: a young assistant physician wants to incise a blood vessel in his arm and then follow it to move a fine rubber catheter slowly heart. His catheter and surgical instruments can only come from a young female nurse. He kept her secret beforehand and convinced of the significance of his experiment. The girl agreed to act as experimenter. She watched the assistant physician successfully complete “heart catheterization” on himself. This may sound incredible, but after all it happened in the 1929 Ebersvård Provincial Hospital not far from Berlin.