XXIX
I asked him: "Do you agree with Poznyshiev[1] when he says that doctors have destroyed and are destroying thousands and hundreds of thousands of people?"
"Are you very interested to know?"
"Very."
"Then I shan't tell you."
And he smiled, playing with his thumbs.
I remember in one of his stories he makes a comparison between a quack village vet. and a doctor of medicine:—
"The words 'giltchak,' 'potchetchny,' bloodletting,'[2] are they not precisely the same as nerves, rheumatism, organisms, etc.?"
And this was written after Jenner, Behring, Pasteur. It is perversity!
[1] In Kreutzer Sonata.