While working at the Scientific Research Medical Laboratory, I developed a friendship with my colleague, a neurologist, MD, Tatiana Viktorovna Eram, may her memory be blessed! My work, in fact, involved close collegial cooperation with her and other doctors, biologists and physiologists. But we had not only a good collegial relationship, but also quite friendly, and I often helped her with various neurological tests that she conducted with patients. Thanks to her, I learned about an external, “non–INVASIVE” method of studying cerebral blood circulation – rheoencephalography, which consisted in registering changes in the strength of a very weak and imperceptible high-frequency current passed through the head from the skin. (Later, I personally met the founder of this method in the USSR, Professor H.H. Yarullin.) Since blood and surrounding tissues have different electrical conductivity, systolic waves entering the vessels of the brain cause changes in conductivity in general, which is recorded by the rheoencephalograph device.

And once, while talking with her after checking the neurological status of a stroke patient, we talked about this topic, Tatiana Viktorovna then told me:

Of course, you know the circumstances of Catherine the Great’s death?

“Yes,” — I replied, not very confidently, – “she died in the toilet, didn’t she?”

“She didn’t die,” – Tatiana Viktorovna corrected, – but THERE she had a hemorrhagic stroke, that is, a perforation of a cranial blood vessel and a cerebral hemorrhage. As you probably know, there are two types of strokes: Hemorrhagic, the aforementioned, and embolic, that is, some kind of blockage of a brain vessel, a blood clot, an air bubble caused by a careless intravenous injection or, in case of brain injury, something else.

Then I remembered a sad story that I was personally familiar with. In the family of my childhood friend, a similar misfortune happened to the young brother of the friend’s father. A man, a pianist by profession, not an old man or even an elderly man, but only twenty-eight years old, had a hemorrhagic stroke in the toilet and died soon after.

Some very bad and evil person even wrote a book on this topic,” – added Tatiana Viktorovna, – “About famous people who died in the toilet.”

And Pushkin also couldn’t resist another meanness, writing a vile rhyme about this tragic event:

“The dear old lady lived

Pleasantly and a little prodigally,

She was of Voltaire’s first friend,

She wrote The Order, burned the fleets,

And died when “boarding” a hospital ship…”

And, what exactly is the reason for this, probably, quite frequent event?

– Constipation, chronic and acute! Plus, latent or overt hypertension.

Here I came up with my “brilliant” medical idea:

So, Tatiana Viktorovna, what’s easier? Let the elderly or not elderly, but suffering from this disease, take laxatives REGULARLY and thus avoid a stroke!

“May be, in a week,” – I added jokingly, – “I will do my PhD thesis with the following title: “On taking laxatives as a preventive measure eliminating hemorrhagic strokes.”

Tatiana Viktorovna smiled, slightly ironically, and cautiously added: But you don’t have a medical degree…

Tatiana Viktorovna, – I objected, – a scientific degree is given for a dissertation, not for a diploma!

In general, we laughed and forgot about this curiosity …

And recently, an old friend of mine (a retired doctor) informed me that he does not use laxatives, but Magnesium tablets, each 400 mg once a day, or 200-250 mg two a day. The action, as he said, is incomparably more “gentle” and physiological, that is, closer to the “natural processes” in the digestive system …

Such things, as one of my friends used to say.

I remembered this story NOT in the toilet, unlike my playful rhyme “The Ballad of the Toilet”, which was published a long time ago, which was also NOT composed THERE!

26 IX 2025