Professor MUDr., DrSc. Josef Koutecký

* 1930  †︎ 2019

  • “Speaking about the obstacles we met in the communist period, as a non-member of the party I had to face invitations to the secret police where I was asked to become their agent. They summoned me to Bartolomejska street, offered everything possible, one was good, the other was bad. I refused. I was afraid what consequences this will have but then – and I think there was a divine providence in this – after I lived for weeks in fear that I would be stripped of my position, whether my children will be impacted, perhaps not being allowed to study or what else, I had a phone call to my office. There was this Secret Police man on the other end. I went dumb, fearing what he wanted. But he wanted something completely else. A friend of his, also at the Secret Police, a former fellow student at a college in Moscow, had a daughter and this daughter had cancer. A very malignant tumour. He asked me to take care of her and to treat her. As I say, it was a very difficult treatment but everything was fine in the end and since then they left me alone. Even they understood that it was better to have a good oncologist than a good secret agent.”

  • “Of course I remember the Prague Uprising, because I built the barricades and carried the wounded. I was fifteen, was a strong young boy. But I also have unpleasant memories of the uprising when the rebels caught a young German soldier, not a Gestapo officer, a Wehrmacht soldier, all young Germans had to serve in the military, including the Hitlerjugend when Hitler was in problems. Just imagine the scene, they caught him, hung him upside down on a street lamp, the Prague street lamp – today we have the tall ones, then they were not that tall. They sprinkled him with gasoline and set him on fire. I remember groups of Germans being led from their flats. Unfortunately, negative human properties were given go, when Czechs, standing by the road and watched the processions of Germans, kicked them, beat them or spat on them. I think this was unnecessary. I know that the people were angry by the six years of war and crimes committed by the Nazi regime, but still I think one should not respond in this way. One should be just and dignified.”

  • “Then they approached me twice in the hospital. First time it was just one officer, he wanted some data from me and promised that I would be able to travel to Japan and elsewhere. I threw him out as well. The third time, it was quite exceptional: just imagine it. They came up to me, asking me to take in a mother with her child into our ward. I was supposed to tell her that there was a suspicion of her child having a tumour. They didn’t hide the real reason: they wanted her out of her flat so they could make a proper search. I told them, ‘You are completely mad. You bring some lady, I have never seen her, never examined the child and I should tell her that there is a suspicion of a tumour? It’s absurd!’ And now listen: what I refused, a colleague at a different clinic consented to.”

  • “From the department a Child Oncology Clinic was established, the only one of its kind in the Czechoslovakia. So we were treating children from all of the state with a terrible lack of everything – space, beds, medicine and equipment, under really terrible conditions. Those children only had a hallway, when they did not have to lie down. They were playing in the hall, they ate in the hall, all visits took place there too. They were lying in two sharing a single bed; some infants were in a pram as we had no little bed. Or we had only a mattress for them to sleep on the ground. And we said to the children, although it was all prohibited, whether they had any relatives abroad or friends, who would smuggle medicine for them, the cytostatic kind. With children it is an advantage that the dosage is calculated based on the body surface or according to weight and they are really small. So using the bottle we could not keep open for very long time, we could also treat the children without any relatives abroad. And when we asked for an extra import, it normally took two, three or four months and during that time the metastasis appeared with the child. So too often we sadly got a treatment only after the child was dead.”

  • “Love towards the field was really immense and I devoted it all my energy. But you know it was tough. A life amongst dying children and those unhappy parents was little fun for me. I could not just close the door and forget about what was happening in the hospital. So I had to deal with all that stuff including a total lack of supplies in all areas. But still our results were getting better. At the start everyone just raised their eyebrows thinking: ,He is just a fool. What is he really doing? All those children were meant to die anyway, his work is a waste of time!‘ So I gradually proved it was not all in vain, as the percentage of surviving children was growing gradually and currently the statistics say that out of a hundred only seventeen children die so that makes eighty-three survivors. Back then only three percent made it. That is an eighty percent difference. So I think that the efforts, strain, obstacles we had to overcome, it was all worth it and my work life was worth it too.“

  • “In certain situations we did not even have surgery gloves. When the glove got torn apart, there was no sterility anymore and you could not operate. But we kept the torn ones, cut little squares out of them and when there was a hole in another glove we used it to repair the damage, then sterilised it and operated in patched rubber gloves! No one would believe it today. When we plastered the fracture to the children, we did our own plaster bandages. A normal bandage, a bag of plaster, now it was dripping, plastering the plaster and packing it again.”

  • “Already as a child surgeon at the clinic of child surgery I started to practise oncology at the orphanage. The zoo bought two gorilla youngsters from Cameroon for a lot of money, in dollars. Foreign currency was highly protected in the communist regime. And with one of the little gorilla they found out that she has got a protuberance on her butt, and they were afraid she might have a tumour. And what else, it was a gorilla, similar creature to a man, a younger on top, and suspected tumour – so who else than Koutecký should do the job. So they called me from the zoo, I examined the gorilla and agreed I would operate her at the clinic, out of operation hours, but with all the fuss, the primary of anaesthesiology gave her anaesthetics. But already prior to the operation I knew she had no tumour, it was just a shot.“

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Music is my greatest love and comfort

Josef Koutecky, 1948 (a graduation photo)
Josef Koutecky, 1948 (a graduation photo)
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

A professor, Josef Koutecký, founded and built the field of expertise of child oncology in the former Czechoslovakia. He was born on 31st August, 1930. Following graduation he decided to study medicine. In 1955 he graduated at the faculty of general medicine of the Charles University. He spent two years in Nový Bydžov and Jánské Lázně. In 1957 he managed to move to Prague to the Clinic of Paediatrics of the Paediatric Faculty, the Charles University in Karlov. Since 1964 he specialised in child oncology. At the child surgery he built an autonomous station of child oncology, which kept growing. In 1978 it was moved to the Faculty hospital in Motol, where a specialised department of child oncology was established. In 1983 the Clinic of child oncology was established and Josef Koutecký appointed its headmaster. In 1987 he was the first professor in the oncology field in the former Czechoslovakia. During his professional carrier he managed to decrease the death ratio of oncology patients by eighty percent, out of the original three percent to current eighty-three percent survivors. After the velvet revolution he was the dean of the 2nd Faculty of Medicine for thirteen years and another three years as vice-rector of the Charles University. For his work he got many awards, amongst others the price Neuron for a contribution to the world science in the field of medicine, the main national award the Czech Head, also a merit medal of the 2nd degree from the president Václav Havel. He was the founding member of the Scholarly Society of the Czech Republic and a member of scientific councils of faculties and universities. He is an author of a number of books and expert works. Amongst his greatest loves belong music, medicine, art and history, Prague, Rudolfine period, the Czech language and animals.