This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 edition. Excerpt: ...who do not get infected at all. Our anxiety has its origin in gossip. One woman says she has an excellent doctor. ' Excuse me, ' replies another, ' he killed So-and-so, ' or conversely. Take them a doctor who knows no more than the one they have been talking about, who has studied in the same books, who prescribes according to the same formulas, but who keeps a carriage and charges one hundred roubles a visit, and they will believe in him. All arises from the fact that our women are savages. They do not believe in God; for which reason some believe in the evil eye, and others in the doctor, if he charges enough for his visits. If they had faith they would know that scarlatina and such maladies are not so very terrible, since they are powerless to disturb what a man can and ought to cherish above all things--the soul. The worst result can only be what none of us can avoid--sickness and death. Without faith in God, their love is only physical; and all their energy is concentrated in the preservation of life, which cannot be preserved, whatever doctors may promise to fools of both sexes. Such promises, however, being made, the doctor must of course be sent for. " Accordingly, the fact of our having children not only did not improve our matrimonial relations, but, on the contrary, separated us more and more. The children furnished new subjects of dispute, and the more they grew up, the more did they occasion quarrels between us. We might almost have been said to use them as arms of combat. We each had a favourite. Little Vassili, the eldest, was mine; hers was Liza. Moreover, when the children reached the age at which character begins to show itself, they often played the part of allies, and were drawn, as such, to my side or my wife's. They suffered...