Leo Tolstoy

“ I think of the appendix—but this is death! I think of mending the appendix, and all the while here is death! Can it really be death?" Again terror seized him and he gasped for breath. He leant down and began feeling for the matches, pressing with his elbow on the stand beside the bed. It was in his way and hurt him, he grew furious with it, pressed on it still harder, and upset it. Breathless and in despair he fell on his back, expecting death to come immediately.
Meanwhile the visitors were leaving. Praskovya Fedorovna was seeing them off. She heard something fall and came in. ”

“ Praskovya Fedorovna was saying.
"Exaggerating! Don't you see it? Why, he's a dead man! Look at his eyes—there's no life in them. But what is it that is wrong with him?"
"No one knows. Nikolaevich said something, but I don't know what. And Leshchetitsky said quite the contrary..."
Ivan Ilych walked away, went to his own room, lay down, and began musing; "The kidney, a floating kidney." ”

“ He undressed and took up a novel by Zola, but instead of reading it he fell into thought, and in his imagination that desired improvement in the vermiform appendix occurred. There were the absorption and evacuation and the re-establishment of normal activity. "Yes, that's it!" he said to himself. "One need only assist nature, that's all." ”