BOHDAN YEVHEN NADRAGА – A DOCTOR BY DESTINY’S CALLING

Abstract

The year 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of Bohdan Yevhen Nadragа’s birth (1922–2018): A medical doctor, an active member of the SHEVCHENKO SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY (SSS) and the UKRAINIAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (UMA), and one of the promoters of the restoration of the traditions of Galician medicine. The purpose of the article is to show the figure of Bohdan Yevhen Nadragа in the context of the history of medicine, scientific and professional interests, and reader preferences based on his own memories and the collective memory of him as a doctor. Bohdan-Yevhen Nadragа was born on March 24, 1922, in Lviv, in the family of lawyer Oleksandr Nadragа and one of the first Galician Ukrainian doctors, Theodosia Tuna-Nadragа. The father passed on a keen sense of moral and legal justice to his son, while the mother – an interest in medicine. His love of medicine and biology was facilitated by his matriculation at the Lviv Academic Gymnasium in the conditions of interwar Poland. After graduating from the gymnasium, B. Nadragа entered Lviv State Medical Institute, where he studied specialized medical courses organized by the German occupation authorities from 1941 to 1944 and graduated in 1945. Here, he entered postgraduate studies at the Department of Normal Physiology, but in October 1947, he was deported to Anzhero-Sudzhensk, Kemerovo Region (Siberia) with his family. There, he worked with his mother, first as a state farm worker and then as a district pediatrician. Only in 1959 was he able to return to Galicia, where he worked as a doctor and was the chief doctor (1966–1983) at Sambir City Children’s Hospital. In 1993, he returned to his native Lviv, where he began working in the methodological office of Lviv Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital (1993-2012). During 1993–1995, he served as the director of the Hospital named after Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi (“Narodna Lichnytsia”), became a member of the board of the restored UMA, joined the work of the medical commission of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, and was the author and editor of many publications of these societies. As the head of the Council of Medical Ethics at UMA, he became one of the authoritative participants in ethical discussions in the medical environment in 1990–2000; he was interested in the history of Lviv medicine and promoted the image of Lviv and Galicia. Respected by everyone as a model doctor and patriot, he passed away on September 28, 2018, at the age of almost 97. The activities of Bohdan Yevhen Nadragа are part of the history of Lviv and Galicia and Galician medicine, in particular pediatrics, to which he devoted his entire professional life.