The
progress of his disease was so gradual that he could deceive himself when
comparing one day with another-the difference was so slight. But when he
consulted the doctors it seemed to him that he was getting worse, and even very
rapidly. Yet despite this he was continually consulting them. That month he
went to see another celebrity, who told him almost the same as the first had
done but put his questions rather differently, and the interview with this
celebrity only increased Ivan Ilych's doubts and fears. A friend of a friend of
his, a very good doctor, diagnosed his illness again quite differently from the
others, and though he predicted recovery, his questions and suppositions
bewildered Ivan Ilych still more and increased his doubts. A homeopathist
diagnosed the disease in yet another way, and prescribed medicine which Ivan
Ilych took secretly for a week. But after a week, not feeling any improvement
and having lost confidence both in the former doctor's treatment and in this
one's, he became still more despondent. One day a lady acquaintance mentioned a
cure effected by a wonder-working icon. Ivan Ilych caught himself listening
attentively and beginning to believe that it had occurred. This incident
alarmed him. "Has my mind really weakened to such an extent?" he
asked himself. "Nonsense! It's all rubbish. I mustn't give way to nervous
fears but having chosen a doctor must keep strictly to his treatment. That is
what I will do. Now it's all settled. I won't think about it, but will follow
the treatment seriously till summer, and then we shall see. From now there must
be no more of this wavering!" this was easy to say but impossible to carry
out.
*
Ivan
Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. In the depth of
his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the
thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt
from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius
is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but
certainly not as applied to himself.
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