Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/206

 had at once found its outlet and taken shape. This luckless soldier, who had very likely never given a thought to young ladies in his life before, suddenly imagined a whole romance, instinctively catching at this straw. I listened without answering and told the other convicts about it. But when the others showed their curiosity he preserved a chaste silence.

Next day the doctor questioned him at length, and as he said that he was not ill in any way, and as on examination this seemed to be true, he was discharged. But we only learnt that they had put sanat on his case-sheet after the doctors had left the ward, so that it was impossible to tell them what was the matter with him. And indeed we hardly realized ourselves at the time what was really the matter. It was all the fault of the officers who had sent him to the hospital without explaining why they had sent him. There must have been some oversight. And perhaps those responsible may not have been at all sure that he was mad, and had acted on vague rumours in sending him to the hospital to be watched. However that may have been, the poor follow was taken out two days later to be punished. The unexpectedness of his fate seems to have been a great shock to him; he did not believe in it till the last minute, and when he was led between the ranks he screamed for help. When he was brought back to the hospital afterwards, he was taken to the other convict ward, as there was no bed empty in ours. But I inquired about him and learnt that for eight days he did not say a word to anyone, that he was crushed and terribly depressed. He was transferred elsewhere, I believe, when his back was healed. I never heard anything more of him, anyway.

As for the general treatment and the drugs, so far as I could see, the patients who were only slightly ill scarcely followed the prescriptions or took their medicines at all. But all who were seriously ill, all who were really ill, in fact, were very fond of being doctored, and took their mixtures and powders punctually, but what they liked best of all were external remedies. Cuppings, leeches, poultices and blood-letting—the remedies which our peasants are so fond of and put such faith in—were accepted by the patients readily, even with relish. I was interested by one strange circumstance. The very men who were so patient in enduring agonizing pain from the sticks and the birch often complained, writhed and even groaned when they were cupped. Whether they had grown soft through illness or were simply showing off, I really do not know. It is true our cuppings were of a peculiar sort. The