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Rh sympathetic disposition, as well as a skilful surgeon, and he found it extremely difficult at times to avoid acting in a professional capacity. He never sought practice, nor made it a means of support; but when a peasant in the incipient stage of typhus fever asked him for advice, or a man suffering from cataract came to him for relief, he gave the requisite advice, or performed the necessary operation, without pay, simply because he regarded the rendering of such service as a duty imposed upon him by humanity. The fame of Dr. Dólgopólof's cures soon reached the isprávnik, and that official, summoning the young surgeon to the police-station, called his attention in an offensive manner to Section 27 of the "Rules," and forbade him thereafter, upon pain of arrest and imprisonment, to treat sick peasants under any circumstances, with pay or without pay. Dr. Dólgopólof, after some hot words, submitted, and discontinued entirely his irregular and unauthorized practice; but his relations with the isprávnik at once became hostile. At that time the mayor of Tiukalínsk was a prominent and wealthy merchant named Balákhin. In the autumn of 1883 Mr. Balákhin's son, while handling a revolver, accidentally shot his mother in the leg. The wound was a dangerous one, and the extraction of the ball would necessitate a difficult surgical operation. The only regular physician in the place, a nervous and rather timid man named Hull, was called in, and succeeded in stopping the hemorrhage from the cut artery; but he declined to undertake the operation for the removal of the ball, and advised Mr. Balákhin to send for Dr. Dólgopólof. "He is a skilful surgeon," said the local practitioner, "and I am not. He can do what is necessary far better than I can, and I don't like to undertake so serious an operation." Mr. Balákhin thereupon hastened to Dr. Dólgopólof and asked his aid.

"I am not allowed to practise," said the young surgeon.

"But this may be a case of life or death," urged Mr. Balákhin.