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Rh that their demands would be complied with, the prisoners continued the golodófka. On the tenth day the state of affairs had become alarming. All of the starving men were in the last stages of physical prostration, and some of them seemed to be near their death. Count Dmitri Tolstoï, the Minister of the Interior, who had been apprised of the situation, telegraphed the commandant to keep a skórbnoi list, or “hospital sheet," setting forth the symptoms and condition of the strikers, and to inform him promptly of any marked change. Every day thereafter a feldsher or hospital-steward went through the cells taking the pulse and the temperature of the starving men. On the thirteenth day of the golodófka Major Khaltúrin sent word to the wives of all the political convicts living at the Lower Diggings that they might have an interview with their husbands — the first in more than two months — if they would try to persuade them to begin taking food. They gladly assented, of course, to this condition, and were admitted to the prison. At the same time Khaltúrin went himself to the starving men and assured them, on his honor, that if they would end the hunger-strike he would do everything in his power