was
studying at the university he had fancied that medicine would soon
be overtaken by the fate of alchemy and metaphysics; but now when
he was reading at night the science of medicine touched him and
excited his wonder, and even enthusiasm. What unexpected brilliance,
what a revolution! Thanks to the antiseptic system operations were
performed such as the great Pirogov had considered impossible even
_in spe_. Ordinary Zemstvo doctors were venturing to perform the
resection of the kneecap; of abdominal operations only one per cent.
was fatal; while stone was considered such a trifle that they did
not even write about it. A radical cure for syphilis had been
discovered. And the theory of heredity, hypnotism, the discoveries
of Pasteur and of Koch, hygiene based on statistics, and the work
of Zemstvo doctors!

Psychiatry with its modern classification of mental diseases, methods
of diagnosis, and treatment, was a perfect Elborus in comparison
with what had been in the past. They no longer poured cold water
on the heads of lunatics nor put strait-waistcoats upon them; they
treated them with humanity, and even, so it was stated in the papers,
got up balls and entertainments for them. Andrey Yefimitch knew
that with modern tastes and views such an abomination as Ward No.
6 was possible only a hundred and fifty miles from a railway in a
little town where the mayor and all the town council were half-illiterate
tradesmen who looked upon the doctor as an oracle who must be
believed without any criticism even if he had poured molten lead
into their mouths; in any other place the public and the newspapers
would long ago have torn this little Bastille to pieces.

"But, after all, what of it?" Andrey Yefimitch would ask himself,
opening his eyes. "There is the antiseptic system, there is Koch,
there is Pasteur, but the essential reality is not altered a bit;
ill-health and mortality are still the same. They get up balls and
entertainments for the mad, but still they don't let them go free;
so it's all nonsense and vanity, and there is no difference in
reality between the best Vienna clinic and my hospital." But
depression and a feeling akin to envy prevented him from feeling
indifferent; it must have been owing to exhaustion. His heavy head
sank on to the book, he put his hands under his face to make it
softer, and thought: "I serve in a pernicious institution and receive
a salary from people whom I am deceiving. I am not honest