Extracting from his pocket a new yellow handkerchief which he had contrived to lay hands upon while proceeding to Arkady's room, he continued, as he flourished the handkerchief in the air:
"Of the fact that, at some cost to myself, I have organised my peasantry on the obrok system, and apportioned them one-half, even more, of my land, I will not speak, since I conceive that to have been my duty, as well as a measure dictated by prudence (though no other landowner in the neighbourhood would have done as much). Rather, I am referring to scholarships and to science."
"I see that you have here The Friend of Health for 1855," remarked Bazarov.
"Yes, a friend sent it me," Vasili Ivanitch hastened to explain. "Phrenology too we take into account" (he addressed this last to Arkady rather than to Bazarov, while accompanying it with a nod towards a small plaster bust of which the cranial surface was divided into a series of numbered squares). "Yes indeed! Nor are we ignorant of Schönlein[6] and Rademacher."
"In the province of —— you still believe in Rademacher?" queried Bazarov.
Vasili Ivanitch laughed.
"In the province of —— we still believe in ——? Ah, gentlemen! Hardly could you expect us to move as fast as you do. You find us in a state of transition. In my day, the humoralist Hoffmann and the vitalist Braun had already come to be looked upon with ridicule (and their fulminations undoubtedly seem absurd); but now you have replaced Rademacher with a new authority, and are making obeisance to that authority exactly as though in twenty years' time he too will not have fallen into contempt."
"Let me tell you, for your comforting," said Bazarov, "that we ridicule all medicine, and render obeisance to no one."
"What? Do you not wish to become a doctor?"
"Yes; but the one thing does not preclude the other."