BU Research Blog

Professor Jonathan Cole, Consultant in Neurophysiology at Poole Hospital and Visiting Professor at BU’s Centre of Postgraduate Medical Research and Education (CoPMRE), was recently part of a team to win a Wellcome Trust Large Arts Award for a theatre piece, ‘Chasm of Sorrow; Chekhov and the Island of Sakhalin’ with artist Andrew Dawson, Chekhov’s biographer Donald Rayfield, and medical historian Marius Turda.

This follows a development grant from the Wellcome Trust which allowed the team to travel to Sakhalin to explore Russian physician and author, Anton Chekhov’s extraordinary journey across Siberia to visit the penal colony on Sakhalin Island in 1890. Chekhov’s book, ‘Sakhalin Island’ combined his literary observation with medical data in an attempt to humanise conditions there.

To watch a short film from Professor Cole’s trip to Sakhalin and for more information on the project, please see:

 http://therussiandoctor.com/

 http://chasmofsorrow.com/

 http://wellcomehistory.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/medicine-in-the-cards/

 http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/stellent/groups/corporatesite/@msh_publishing_group/documents/web_document/wtp054224.pdf