Chapter 5 Fives

Fives Weird gossip! Andrey Yefimitch Lakin, the doctor, was in one way an unusual man.It is said that he believed in God when he was young and was preparing to take up the priesthood in the future.He graduated from school in 1863, and intended to enter a seminary, but his father, a doctor of medicine and a surgeon, gave him a bitter sarcasm and declared that if he really went to be a priest, he would not be a priest. recognize his son.How credible this statement is, I do not know, but Andrey Yefimitch himself has more than once admitted that he has never been interested in medicine, and in general specialized subjects.

In any case, he finished his medical courses and did not become a priest.It was impossible to see how he believed in God, and when he started his practice he was no more religious than he is now. His appearance was heavy and vulgar, like a peasant.His face, beard, smooth hair, and strong, clumsy figure reminded one of a well-fed, careless, rude proprietor in a small restaurant off a boulevard.His face was rough, covered with fine veins, his eyes were small, and his nose was red.Because of his tall stature and broad shoulders, his hands and feet are large, and it seems that a single punch can kill a person.But his gait was slow, and he walked cautiously and tiptoely.When meeting people in a narrow aisle, he always stopped first to give way and said, "I'm sorry!"—his voice was not at all the expected bass, but a shrill, soft-toned baritone.A small wart on his neck prevented him from wearing a starched collar, so he always wore soft linen or cotton shirts.Generally speaking, he doesn't dress like a doctor.He has been wearing a suit of clothes for ten years, and he goes to Jewish shops to buy new clothes as usual, and the crumpled new clothes look like old clothes to him.The same frock coat, he wears it when he sees a doctor, wears it when he eats, and also wears it when he goes out as a guest.But he didn't do it out of stinginess, but because he was completely untidy.

When Andrei Yefimitch came to the city to take up his post, the "charity" was in a terrible state, the wards, corridors, and hospital yards were full of foul smells and oppressive smells. angry.Hospital orderlies, nurse assistants and their children lived with the patients in the wards.People complain that cockroaches, bedbugs and rats are disturbing everyone's life.In surgery, erysipelas has never been eradicated. There are only two scalpels in the entire hospital, no thermometers, and potatoes in the bathroom.It was said that Andrei Yefimitch's former old doctor secretly sold the alcohol in the hospital, and he also recruited nurses and female patients to form his harem.All this nonsense is well known, even exaggerated, by the townspeople, and yet they are indifferent to it.Some people make unreasonable words, saying that the people in the hospital are petty citizens and peasants. Such people cannot be dissatisfied, because their life at home is much worse than that in the hospital, so they can't afford to eat grouse!Others argued that without the help of the Zemstvo, a decent hospital would not have been possible on the town's own means;And the newly established Zemstvo did not open clinics either in the city or on the outskirts, on the pretext that there were already hospitals in the city.

Inspecting the hospital, Andrey Yefimitch came to the conclusion that the institution was dishonest and extremely harmful to the health of the patients.In his opinion, the most sensible course of action was to send all the patients home and close the hospital.But he considered that it would be difficult to do so in his own authority alone, and it would not help.If physical and spiritual defilement is driven out from one place, it will be transferred to another; it should be allowed to disappear of its own accord.Besides, since people open hospitals and tolerate their existence, it can be seen that they are needed by people.Prejudice and all this everyday vileness is also necessary, because in time they will be transformed into useful things, just as dung is turned into black.There is no good thing in this world that does not have an ugly element in its beginning.

After taking office, Andrey Yefimitch seemed to have been rather indifferent to the chaos in the hospital.He only asked the hospital's orderlies and nurses not to spend the night in the ward, and bought two cabinets of medical equipment. As for the head of the general, the female administrator, the erysipelas of the doctors and the surgeon, everything remained the same. Andrey Yefimitch was extremely fond of wisdom and integrity, but he lacked strength of character, lack of confidence in building a wise and upright life around him.To give orders, to forbid, to insist on his own opinion, he was completely incapable of doing so.It looked as if he had sworn never to raise his voice, never to use an imperative. "Give me this" or "bring that thing" was hard for him to say.Whenever he was hungry, he coughed hesitantly, and said to the cook, "I'd better get me a cup of tea," or "I'd better get me something to eat."As for telling the Bursar not to allow him to steal, or driving him out, or simply abolishing this superfluous parasitic post—there was absolutely nothing he could do.Whenever someone cheated Andrey Yefimitch, or flattered him, or brought him a manifestly false bill for his signature, he always blushed with embarrassment, and despite his guilt, Signed the bill.Whenever a patient complained to him that he was not getting enough to eat, or that the nurse was being rude, he was embarrassed and muttered apologetically:

"Okay, okay, I'll investigate later... Maybe this is a misunderstanding..." At first Andrey Yefimitch worked very hard.He sees patients, performs operations, and sometimes even delivers babies from morning until lunch.Female patients say that he is careful and accurate in diagnosis, especially for pediatric diseases and gynecological diseases.But as time passed, he was evidently bored by the monotony and futility of his work.Thirty patients are treated today, and the number increased to thirty-five tomorrow, and forty the day after tomorrow. I see a doctor every day and year after year, but the mortality rate in the city has not decreased because of this, and the patients continue to come.It is physically impossible to really help forty patients in one morning, so even if you don't want to, the result can only be a deception.To treat 12,000 patients in a fiscal year, to put it bluntly, is to deceive 12,000 patients.As for putting seriously ill patients in wards and treating them according to scientific regulations, this is also impossible, because there are regulations, but science does not.If you put aside empty arguments and follow the rules like other doctors, then first of all you need cleanliness and ventilation, not garbage and dirty air; you need wholesome food, not sour cabbage soup; you need assistants. , not a thief.

Besides, since death is the normal and reasonable end of every human being, why stop people from dying?So what if a merchant or civil servant lived five or ten years longer?If one thinks that the task of medicine is to relieve pain with drugs, then a question cannot but be raised here: why should pain be relieved?It is said, first, that pain makes man perfect; and, second, that if man had really learned to relieve his pain with pills and potions, he would have completely abandoned religion and philosophy, in which he has so far found not only the warding off of all misery talisman, and even found happiness.Pushkin suffered terrible ordeals before his death, and poor Heine was bedridden for several years with paralysis.So why shouldn't a certain Andrey Yefimitch or Matrona be sick?Know that the lives of these people have no content. If there were no pain, their lives would be utterly empty, like the lives of amoebas.

① A single-celled animal. These thoughts discouraged Andrey Yefimitch, and he ceased to go to the hospital every day.