On Christmas Eve 1890, Chekhov writes to his friend and editor Alexi Suvorin:
“I believe
in both [Robert] Koch and spermine, and I praise the Lord. Kochines, spermines,
etc. all appear to the public to be some sort of miracle that has sprung
unexpectedly from someone’s head like Pallas Athene, but people on the inside [that
is, doctors and medical researchers] see it as nothing more than the natural result
of everything that has been done for the last twenty years.”
On Monday I shared
an elevator ride with a couple in the Cleveland Clinic. The husband was pushing
his wife’s wheelchair. We rode eleven floors together, long enough to share where
we came from – Philadelphia and Houston. They seemed like naturally friendly
people and very happy together, not always the case in a hospital.
Koch (1843-1910)
is one of the great heroes of mankind, along with Louis Pasteur. He identified the
bacteria that cause such infectious diseases as tuberculosis (which eventually
killed Chekhov), cholera and anthrax. His work led to a general acceptance of
the germ theory of disease. But the public has always been conflicted about medicine,
doctors and science in general. As Chekhov suggests, they expect miracles yet remain
deeply suspicious (e.g, the anti-vaccination movement). Perhaps this shouldn’t
surprise us. To be human is to be contradictory by nature.
On Wednesday
I rode the elevator again with the Philadelphia couple. This time the woman was
crying and the man was red-faced and grim. I asked if I could help and the
husband kept shaking his head and repeatedly saying “Fucking doctors.” We reached
our floor and that’s all I know. Chekhov continues in his letter to Suvorin:
“Does the
kochine cure syphilis? Possibly. [It didn’t.] But as far as cancer is concerned,
you’ll have to permit me to have my doubts. Cancer is not a microbe; it is a
tissue that grows in the wrong place and like a weed overgrows all the
neighboring tissues.”
[You can find the letter in Anton Chekhov’s Life and Thought: Selected Letters and Commentary (trans. Michael Henry Heim and Simon Karlinsky, 1973).]
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