University of Virginia Library

XXIX

I asked him: "Do you agree with Poznyshiev [in 'Kreutzer Sonata'] when he says that doctors have destroyed and are destroying thousands and hundreds of thousands of people?"

"Are you very anxious to know?"

"Very."

"Then I shan't tell you."

And he smiled, playing with his thumbs.

I remember in one of his stories he makes a comparison between a quack village "vet." and a doctor of medicine:

"The words 'giltchak,' 'potchetchny,' 'blood-letting' [words used by quack 'vets.' for the diseases of horses], are not they precisely the same as nerves, rheumatism, organisms, etc.?"

And this was written after Jenner, Behring, Pasteur. It is perversity!