Ivan Dmitritch's neighbour on the left hand is, as I have said
already, the Jew Moiseika; his neighbour on the right hand is a
peasant so rolling in fat that he is almost spherical, with a blankly
stupid face, utterly devoid of thought. This is a motionless,
gluttonous, unclean animal who has long ago lost all powers of
thought or feeling. An acrid, stifling stench always comes from
him.
Nikita, who has to clean up after him, beats him terribly with all
his might, not sparing his fists; and what is dreadful is not his
being beaten--that one can get used to--but the fact that this
stupefied creature does not respond to the blows with a sound or a
movement, nor by a look in the eyes, but only sways a little like
a heavy barrel.
The fifth and last inhabitant of Ward No. 6 is a man of the artisan
class who had once been a sorter in the post office, a thinnish,
fair little man with a good-natured but rather sly face. To judge
from the clear, cheerful look in his calm and intelligent eyes, he
has some pleasant idea in his mind, and has some very important and
agreeable secret. He has under his pillow and under his mattress
something that he never shows anyone, not from fear of its being
taken from him and stolen, but from modesty. Sometimes he goes to
the window, and turning his back to his companions, puts something
on his breast, and bending his head, looks at it; if you go up to
him at such a moment, he is overcome with confusion and snatches
something off his breast. But it is not difficult to guess his
secret.
"Congratulate me," he often says to Ivan Dmitritch; "I have been
presented with the Stanislav order of the second degree with the
star. The second degree with the star is only given to foreigners,
but for some reason they want to make an exception for me," he says
with a smile, shrugging his shoulders in perplexity. "That I must
confess I did not expect."
"I don't understand anything about that," Ivan Dmitritch replies
morosely.
"But do you know what I shall attain to sooner or later?" the former
sorter persists, screwing up his eyes slyly. "I shall certainly get
the Swedish 'Polar Star.' That's an order it is worth working for,
a white cross with a black ribbon. It's very beautiful."
Probably in no other place is life so monotonous as in this ward.
In the morning the patients, except the paralytic and the fat
peasant, wash in the entry at a big tab and wipe themselves with
the skirts of their dressing-gowns; after that they drink tea out
of tin mugs which Nikita brings them out of the main building.
Everyone is allowed one mugful. At midday they have soup made out
of sour cabbage and boiled grain, in the evening their supper
consists of grain left from dinner. In the intervals they lie down,
sleep, look out of window, and walk from one corner to the other.
And so every day. Even the former sorter always talks of the same
orders.
Fresh faces are rarely seen in Ward No. 6. The doctor has not taken
in any new mental cases for a long time, and the people who are
fond of visiting lunatic asylums are few in this world. Once every
two months Semyon Lazaritch, the barber, appears in the ward. How
he cuts the patients' hair, and how Nikita helps him to do it, and
what a trepidation the lunatics are always thrown into by the arrival
of the drunken, smiling barber, we will not describe.
No one even looks into the ward except the barber. The patients are
condemned to see day after day no one but Nikita.
A rather strange rumour has, however, been circulating in the
hospital of late.
It is rumoured that the doctor has begun to visit Ward No. 6.
V
A strange rumour!
Dr. Andrey Yefimitch Ragin is a strange man in his way. They say
that when he was young he was very religious, and prepared himself
for a clerical career, and that when he had finished his studies
at the high school in 1863 he intended to enter a theological
academy, but that his father, a surgeon and doctor of medicine,
jeered at him and declared point-blank that he would disown him if
he became a priest. How far this is true I don't know, but Andrey
Yefimitch himself has more than once confessed that he has never
had a natural bent for medicine or science in general.
However that may have been, when he finished his studies in the
medical faculty he did not enter the priesthood. He showed no special
devoutness, and was no more like a priest at the beginning of his
medical career than he is now.
His exterior is heavy--coarse like a peasant's, his face, his
beard, his flat hair, and his coarse, clumsy figure, suggest an
overfed, intemperate, and harsh innkeeper on the highroad. His face
is surly-looking and covered with blue veins, his eyes are little
and his nose is red. With his height and broad shoulders he has
huge hands and feet; one would think that a blow from his fist would
knock the life out of anyone, but his step is soft, and his walk
is cautious and insinuating; when he meets anyone in a narrow passage
he is always the first to stop and make way, and to say, not in a
bass, as one would expect, but in a high, soft tenor: "I beg your
pardon!" He has a little swelling on his neck which prevents him
from wearing stiff starched collars, and so he always goes about
in soft linen or cotton shirts. Altogether he does not dress like
a doctor. He wears the same suit for ten years, and the new clothes,
which he usually buys at a Jewish shop, look as shabby and crumpled
on him as his old ones; he sees patients and dines and pays visits
all in the same coat; but this is not due to niggardliness, but to
complete carelessness about his appearance.
When Andrey Yefimitch came to the town to take up his duties the
"institution founded to the glory of God" was in a terrible condition.
One could hardly breathe for the stench in the wards, in the passages,
and in the courtyards of the hospital. The hospital servants, the
nurses, and their children slept in the wards together with the
patients. They complained that there was no living for beetles,
bugs, and mice. The surgical wards were never free from erysipelas.
There were only two scalpels and not one thermometer in the whole
hospital; potatoes were kept in the baths. The superintendent, the
housekeeper, and the medical assistant robbed the patients, and of
the old doctor, Andrey Yefimitch's predecessor, people declared
that he secretly sold the hospital alcohol, and that he kept a
regular harem consisting of nurses and female patients. These
disorderly proceedings were perfectly well known in the town, and
were even exaggerated, but people took them calmly; some justified
them on the ground that there were only peasants and working men
in the hospital, who could not be dissatisfied, since they were
much worse off at home than in the hospital--they couldn't be fed
on woodcocks! Others said in excuse that the town alone, without
help from the Zemstvo, was not equal to maintaining a good hospital;
thank God for having one at all, even a poor one. And the newly
formed Zemstvo did not open infirmaries either in the town or the
neighbourhood, relying on the fact that the town already had its
hospital.
After looking over the hospital Andrey Yefimitch came to the
conclusion that it was an immoral institution and extremely prejudicial
to the health of the townspeople. In his opinion the most sensible
thing that could be done was to let out the patients and close the
hospital. But he reflected that his will alone was not enough to
do this, and that it would be useless; if physical and moral impurity
were driven out of one place, they would only move to another; one
must wait for it to wither away of itself. Besides, if people open
a hospital and put up with having it, it must be because they need
it; superstition and all the nastiness and abominations of daily
life were necessary, since in process of time they worked out to
something sensible, just as manure turns into black earth. There
was nothing on earth so good that it had not something nasty about
its first origin.
When Andrey Yefimitch undertook his duties he was apparently not
greatly concerned about the irregularities at the hospital. He only
asked the attendants and nurses not to sleep in the wards, and had
two cupboards of instruments put up; the superintendent, the
housekeeper, the medical assistant, and the erysipelas remained
unchanged.
Andrey Yefimitch loved intelligence and honesty intensely, but he
had no strength of will nor belief in his right to organize an
intelligent and honest life about him. He was absolutely unable to
give orders, to forbid things, and to insist. It seemed as though
he had taken a vow never to raise his voice and never to make use
of the imperative. It was difficult for him to say "Fetch" or
"Bring"; when he wanted his meals he would cough hesitatingly and
say to the cook, "How about tea?. . ." or "How about dinner? . . ."
To dismiss the superintendent or to tell him to leave off stealing,
or to abolish the unnecessary parasitic post altogether, was
absolutely beyond his powers. When Andrey Yefimitch was deceived
or flattered, or accounts he knew to be cooked were brought him to
sign, he would turn as red as a crab and feel guilty, but yet he
would sign the accounts. When the patients complained to him of
being hungry or of the roughness of the nurses, he would be confused
and mutter guiltily: "Very well, very well, I will go into it later
. . . . Most likely there is some misunderstanding. . ."
At first Andrey Yefimitch worked very zealously. He saw patients
every day from morning till dinner-time, performed operations, and
even attended confinements. The ladies said of him that he was
attentive and clever at diagnosing diseases, especially those of
women and children. But in process of time the work unmistakably
wearied him by its monotony and obvious uselessness. To-day one
sees thirty patients, and to-morrow they have increased to thirty-five,
the next day forty, and so on from day to day, from year to year,
while the mortality in the town did not decrease and the patients
did not leave off coming. To be any real help to forty patients
between morning and dinner was not physically possible, so it could
but lead to deception. If twelve thousand patients were seen in a
year it meant, if one looked at it simply, that twelve thousand men
were deceived. To put those who were seriously ill into wards, and
to treat them according to the principles of science, was impossible,
too, because though there were principles there was no science; if
he were to put aside philosophy and pedantically follow the rules
as other doctors did, the things above all necessary were cleanliness
and ventilation instead of dirt, wholesome nourishment instead of
broth made of stinking, sour cabbage, and good assistants instead
of thieves; and, indeed, why hinder people dying if death is the
normal and legitimate end of everyone? What is gained if some
shop-keeper or clerk lives an extra five or ten years? If the aim
of medicine is by drugs to alleviate suffering, the question forces
itself on one: why alleviate it? In the first place, they say that
suffering leads man to perfection; and in the second, if mankind
really learns to alleviate its sufferings with pills and drops, it
will completely abandon religion and philosophy, in which it has
hitherto found not merely protection from all sorts of trouble, but
even happiness. Pushkin suffered terrible agonies before his death,
poor Heine lay paralyzed for several years; why, then, should not
some Andrey Yefimitch or Matryona Savishna be ill, since their lives
had nothing of importance in them, and would have been entirely
empty and like the life of an amoeba except for suffering?
Oppressed by such reflections, Andrey Yefimitch relaxed his efforts
and gave up visiting the hospital every day.