That self-appendectomy

Photos provided by Dr. Vladislav Rogozov (son of the surgeon/
patient Leonid Rogozov),

So here are the facts: it happened during 6th Soviet Antarctic Expedition at Novolazarevskaya Station. The patient was the only physician on station, so the assistant was a mechanic. It was on April 30, 1961. The operation took 2 hours. He positioned himself so that he could see his own body using a mirror when doing the surgery - he made a 12 cm cut through which he found the appendix. After 5 days the doctor felt good, and after 7 days he removed the wires which had been used to sew up the body. His name: Leonid Rogozov. He published a short note about this in the Soviet Antarctic Expedition Information Bulletin, no. 37, pp. 42-44, 1962.

The above information was provided a while ago by Alex Zaitsev, the Russian exchange scientist and friend that I wintered with at Pole in 1977. When the bulletins were translated into English, they were compiled in volumes of ten issues; numbers 31-40 were put in Volume 4, so the English reference for Dr. Rogozov's note is Rogozov KI: Self-operation. Soviet Antarctic Expedition Information Bulletin 4:223, 1964, and here is an other copy.

Novolazarevskaya is at 70°S 11°E, set up in 1960-61 on rock (the Shirmacher Oasis) in Queen Maud Land, 50 miles inland from the ice edge. It was closed for a bit in 1992...but more recently it is more commonly known as Novo...the blue ice runway also used by tourist operations is a few miles to the southwest.