Hard work and heavy eating began to tell on Stephan. After a particularly heavy meal on a Christmas Eve he had an attack of indigestion in the house of a friend.
"Should we call a doctor, Stephan Ivanoff?"
He refused at first. Had he not denounced all the doctors as fakers! But when the cramps almost killed him he made no answer as the suggestion to call a doctor was made again.
The old practitioner of the district was brought to the well known quack's bedside. The doctor hoped that the news "the quack called a doctor when ill" might loosen the healer's hold on the people.
Ivanoff was breathing heavily. The doctor took the sick man's hand to feel the pulse. Suddenly the healer snatched his hand away, and with all the energy at his command exclaimed:
"Stop! You know who I am? Don't we know that there isn't such a thing as a pulse?" and he refused to be treated.
That indigestion killed Stephan Ivanoff.
The neighborhood says: Because there was not another man in New York who had met that holy man from Omsk.