up apathetic complaints of being corrupted by our environment. It is true no doubt that it does destroy a great deal in us, but not everything, and often a crafty and knowing rogue, especially if he is an eloquent speaker or writer, will cover up not simply weakness but often real baseness, justifying it by the influence of his “environment.”
But again I have wandered from my subject; I merely meant to say that the mistrust and hostility of the peasants are directed rather against medical administration than against the doctors themselves. When the peasant finds out what they are really like, he quickly loses many of his prejudices. The general arrangements of our hospitals are still in many respects out of harmony with the national spirit, their routine is still antagonistic to the people’s habits, and not calculated to win their full confidence and respect. So at least it seems to me from some of my personal experiences.
Our ward doctor usually stopped before every patient, examined and questioned him gravely, and with the greatest attention, and prescribed his medicine and his diet. Sometimes he noticed that there was nothing the matter with the patient, but as the convict had come for a rest from work, or to lie on a mattress instead of bare boards, and in a warm room instead of in the damp lock-up, where huge masses of pale and wasted prisoners were kept awaiting their trial (prisoners awaiting trial are almost always, all over Russia, pale and wasted—a sure sign that they are generally physically and spiritually worse off than convicted prisoners), our ward doctor calmly entered them as suffering from “febris catarrhalis” and sometimes let them stay even for a week. We all used to laugh over this “febris catarrhalis.” We knew very well that this was, by a tacit understanding between the doctor and the patient, accepted as the formula for malingering or “handy shooting pains” which was the convicts’ translation of “febris catarrhalis.” Sometimes a patient abused the doctor’s soft-heartedness and stayed on till he was forcibly turned out. Then you should have seen our ward doctor: he seemed shy, he seemed ashamed to say straight out to the patient that he must get well and make haste to ask for his discharge, though he had full right to discharge him by writing on his chart “sanat est” without any talk or cajoling. At first he gave him a hint, afterwards he tried as it were to persuade him: “Isn’t your time up? You are almost well, you know; the ward is crowded.” and so on and so on, till the
