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 lockup, 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 softheartedness 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 patient himself began to feel ashamed, and at last asked for his discharge of his own accord. The chief doctor, though he was a humane and honest man (the convicts were very fond of him, too), was far sterner and more determined than the ward doctor; he could even show a grim severity on occasion, and he was particularly respected among us for it. He made his appearance followed by the whole staff, and also examined each patient separately, staying longer with those who were seriously ill, and he always managed to say a kind, encouraging word to them, often full of true feeling. Altogether he made a very good impression. Convicts who came in with a “handy shooting pain,” he never rejected nor turned out, but if the patient were too persistent, he simply discharged him: “Well, brother, you’ve been here long enough, you’ve had a rest, you can go, you mustn’t outstay your welcome.” Those who persisted in remaining were either lazy convicts who shirked work, especially in the summer when the hours were long, or prisoners who were awaiting corporal punishment. I remember special severity, even cruelty, being used in one such case to induce the convict to take his discharge. He came with an eye infection; his eyes were red and he complained of an acute shooting pain in them. He was treated with blisters, leeches, drops of some corrosive fluid, but the malady remained, the eyes were no better. Little by little, the doctors guessed that it was a sham: there was a continual slight inflammation which grew neither worse nor better, it was always in the same condition. The case was suspicious. The convicts had long known that he was shamming and deceiving people, though he did not confess it himself. He was a young fellow, rather good-looking, indeed, though he made an unpleasant impression on all of them: reserved, suspicious, frowning, he talked to no one, had a menacing look, held aloof from everyone as though he were suspicious. I remember it even occurred to some people that he might do something violent. He had been a soldier, had been found out in thieving on a large scale, and was sentenced to a thousand strokes and a convict battalion. To defer the moment of punishment, as I have mentioned before, convicts sometimes resorted to terrible expedients: by stabbing one of the officials or a fellow convict they would get a new trial, and their punishment would be deferred for some two months and their aim would be attained. It was nothing to them that the punishment when it did come, two months later, would be twice or three times as severe; all they care about was deferring the awful moment if only for a few days at any cost—so extreme is sometimes the prostration of spirit of these poor creatures.
Some of the convicts whispered among themselves that we ought to be on our guard against this man—he might murder someone in
