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The Dufek File


A more detailed postmortem material written by doctors can be sent over to you, as well as all Dr. Dufek's material—including his regular EKGs covering also the period immediately preceding the death.

My husband had been feeling perfectly well in the evening before his death, enjoying TV programmes, and all had been at its best.

In the morning I was awakened by his rattling breathing that had lasted about quarter of an hour. The doctor came no sooner than half an hour later. Maybe I didn't act sufficiently quickly, and moreover there was no correct doctor at hand.

My husband was about to go both in Paris and the U.S.A., and it seems he had been tired by arranging all necessary things. I suppose that his journey to the U.S.A. for a checkup would have been preferable. Finally, please let me know what to do with the pacemaker. I know that Dr. Chardack will want to examine it to see if the batteries did indeed fail. Wishing you all the best for 1965, both you and your family.

P.S.: In case this letter gets over before Christmas, receive our most sincere Christmas wishes.

P.S. 2: The pacemaker worked perfectly.

The last document in the file is a letter that arrived six months later from the widow Dufkova:

Pardubice, June 9, 1965
Dear Doctor Takaro: I beg your pardon for being so late with my answer. To begin with, I lent the pacemaker to Dr. Peleska and then I was trying to get it back, but I didn't succeed. And then I got ill. It was a bad nervous disorder. My daughter not much better with her health. (I don't know if you could feel during your short stay the rarely [sic] warm relationship between Daniela and her father.)

At last Dr. Peleska announced to me the pacemaker was addressed to Dr. Chardack. I questioned if the pacemaker came in order to the U.S.A. My husband was not a patient of Dr. Peleska.

From the correspondence of my husband, it appears that he was anxious about the arrangement and control of the pacemaker, and I suppose he couldn't get sufficient information by letter.

I am very sorry, and I am thinking of it day and night, that we didn't try hard enough to make his journey to the U.S.A. instead of the planned journey to France. Dr. Piwnica wrote they are in electronics not so far as in the U.S.A. I was prepared to bring everything in sacrifice.

Some of the many letters in Takaro's "Dufek File," many of them carbon copies on onionskin paper.

During the last time my husband didn't look healthy. He was livid, and about a month before his death he had attacks of faintness, which he was able to overcome. I remember it was during the TV programme, and in the eve of his death he also looked a long time at TV. I wonder if this fact was not perhaps of some influence?

In August 1964, at the Cardiologic Conference in Prague, my husband
spoke with his friends about eventual fibrosis and in that case about the necessity to replace electrodes. I suppose he didn't mind enough his own case, or rather he had on his mind different possibilities in the foreign countries.

Dr. Peleska sent the postmortem material to Prof. Dr. Chardack, as I see from the copy of his letter. Please let me know if you wish to get EKG or another information relating to the time before his death. The head of the Department of Pathology told me recently that the reason for the death is not yet known and that the material is under study.

My husband had a lot of plans and of energy to work. He planned with certainty the journey to the U.S.A. He wished very much to meet Prof. Chardack and we all looked forward to meeting you and getting acquainted with your family, especially Daniela. Please, if you know the reason
of the death, be so kind as to let me know. . . . We are very sad. The correspondence with your son comforts Daniela very much.

That is the last item in the "Dufek File." I

"My husband had a lot of plans and of energy to work," wrote Dufek's widow to Takaro after her husband's death. "Please, if you know the reason of the death, be so kind as to let me know. . . . We are very sad."

sent a letter of condolence to Madame Dufkova but heard no more from the family. And at about the same time, Bill Chardack's research interests diverged from mine and I lost touch with him for the next three decades. By the time we reestablished contact, he was not well, and the subject of Dr. Dufek's pacemaker did not come up.

However, I have no reason to suspect any reason for the device's failure other that the batteries had reached the end of their useful life—then about two years. Dr. Dufek's batteries actually lasted a few months beyond that period.

Today, the batteries in a pacemaker can last for up to seven years.


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Takaro, a 1942 graduate of DMS, is a retired thoracic surgeon and former chief of staff at the VA Medical Center in Asheville, N.C. He has written several previous features for Dartmouth Medicine, including—for the Fall 2004 issue—"The Man in the Middle," about the crucial role played by Dartmouth College alumnus Basil O'Connor in the development of the Salk polio vaccine. The punctuation and spelling of the letters included in this issue have been standardized, and in some cases the original wording has been adapted slightly or excerpted from longer passages.

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