'Appear to the Public to be Some Sort of Miracle'

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).]