Buteyko's Discovery Volume 2 Extract

Buteyko again fingered the washing line he’d taken down from the shelf, and thought “that’s pretty rough.” Then, feverishly, “don’t tell me I’ll need to soap it? And then there was the hook. That had to be strong too. You couldn’t hang yourself from the plumbing in the bathroom after all…

Buteyko surveyed the bathroom slowly by its infrared light. It was a bit small. Airless. Horrid. He squeezed the hank of washing line in his fist and made decisively for the large main room that looked out over the court yard. … Perhaps a hook from the chandelier would hold. Buteyko, tried to work out where best to put the stool.

“The whale expects a bolt to the belly,
but a shot in the back
Was a bolt from the blue“

The doctor nearly dropped the rope in surprise. Vladimir Vysotsky, the Moscow bard suddenly erupted through the neighbour’s adjoining wall. He’d started out as a semi-underground singer, but now was all the rage. The sound of his snarl, hit Buteyko literally like a bolt from the blue.

The doctor slowly lifted his head and scrutinised the iron hook, dusted with white plaster. It wasn’t going to be easy for him to die, because he could do without air an awful lot longer than most people. Years of training had done that for him.

“Whoever you are, you were not expected here
And you have rent, you have torn the sail.”

Suddenly furious, Buteyko flung the rope down on the yellow cover of the couch and opened the ventilator wide. The cold October breeze immediately lifted the burgundy flowered curtains …

Vysotsky’s voice literally drove him off target. Exhausted, the doctor lowered himself onto the edge of his rather firm, customised, bed. It’s not so easy to take your own life, dammit! Even now, when it seems all is lost, once and for all…. He cast vacant eyes over the room. It was almost empty, as though it had been looted from top to bottom. His wife had left him, and taken virtually every last stick of furniture from the flat, except the sideboard and cupboard, Buteyko counted, mechanically. But why would she take the cupboard when the lousy curtains were still intact? He leant back on the cool partition wall.

But what was surprising about that? That’s what wives do to failures. Academician Rebrov had given the Health Ministry such a thumbs-down after the clinical trials of his method in Leningrad, that the only surprising thing was that Buteyko was still at liberty… Comrade Zarubin had ordered his laboratory shut as soon as the trials ended; his equipment had been dismantled, and he heard that nurses had been seen steaming hospital laundry in parts of his famous laboratory

“But you have rent, you have torn the sail!.”

Buteyko could hardly take the anguished voice reaching him through the wall. To boil up filthy sheets in a unique apparatus that had saved thousands of lives…, and they were burning sheets in it!

“ But you have rent, you have torn the sail!.”

He had seen the charts of formulae for equalising the breath, ripped down and stashed by the builders’ wooden portable toilet in the court yard at the back of the hospital. Oh God! Dr. Buteyko again reached for the hank of rope at the end of the couch.

Quacks! Careerists! Money grabbers! All your academic salaries combined could never pay for the damage you have caused! And what about people? What about the poor powerless patients? Who will give them the help they tried to get from you for years on end, but only found here in the laboratory and literally within days of coming? Well, alright Mr top flight academic, you can settle your personal scores with me - let’s say I was in your way somehow. But what about your Hippocratic Oath? In your day, you all solemnly swore to help the needy. But now, one stroke of a bureaucratic pen has destroyed a totally unique scientific research laboratory. In fact it has written off thousands of human lives! Is there anything to live for now? Buteyko unwound a small length of rope and tested it for strength. It held! The thin twine, yellowing with damp and use, could probably take his mortal remains.

“ But you have rent, you have torn the sail!
To your shame, your shame,deepest shame “

Who put on this hoarse, sobbing song? The doctor pushed himself away from the wall abruptly, to distance himself from the neighbour’s tape recorder. It just tore his heart out and his heart was torn already.

Shame? He had nothing to be ashamed of: his enemies should be ashamed. Although, if Buteyko were to leave this world before his time and by his own hand, the academic Rebrovs and Pomekhins of this world were hardly likely to be ashamed. Just thinking about it, brought a light perspiration to the doctor’s brow: not just no shame; more like they’d build the bonfire higher, as a fitting tribute for the deceased, then for the next 50, or maybe even 100 years, no one would bother them in their pill and scalpel paradise. No one would trouble them with proof of the miraculous power of carbon dioxide gas. Pack the patients full of as many “compound powders” as you like, and slice them up on the operating table.

The doctor lowered his head, saddened. Whether he hanged himself or not, nothing was likely to change. He could argue the case for his discovery as long as he had access to his small, first class laboratory – because it was hard for even a dyed-in-the wool cretin to totally reject results achieved in a laboratory. But now there was no laboratory. It had disappeared, gone for ever. His closest colleagues and most skilful acolytes were jobless, with no means of survival. And Buteyko himself felt he was left with nothing but the smithereens of broken hopes.

So why cling to this crummy benighted existence? Who needs it? Not him. For someone who had first identified the illnesses associated with deep breathing, this kind of life was absolutely no use and physically repellent! To stay alive, and see queues of patients every day, flocking through narrow hospital doors that were too clogged first thing to admit them freely. He could vividly picture this stream of physical suffering, spilling out through the narrow, chlorinated hospital corridors, then pooling into different groups in front of different departments with their beloved departmental notices. He could picture the doctors reluctantly starting to examine the endless stream of patients, deadened by their excessive daily workload; and he could picture them prescribing their totally useless tablets, injections and lotions: month in, month out. Year in, year out!

To see, appreciate, and understand all this stupidity - yet be unable to influence it? No! It was more than he could bear. Buteyko walked briskly to the kitchen and returned with a heavy strong stool. Let all those official quacks get on with it without him. What could he do?

The doctor shifted the stool nearer the hook, then threw himself down...

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