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A Policy of Death.
125-
prompting of lier own nature that has impelled her, like so
many other young ladies of gentle nurture, to " go to the
people," and risk her health and life in tending her suffering
fellows. There is nothing theatrical, no touch of the stage
heroine about her. Like her other sisters, she seems perfectly
unconscious both of the dangers to which she is exposed, and
of anything heroic in her occupation. It is the most natural
thing in the world to help her needy neighbours.
"We go first to the temporary typhus hospital—a peasant’s
cottage fitted up for the purpose. Above the door is the grim
inscription : " No admittance ! Infectious diseases ! " Outside
is a group of men and women waiting for news of their
relatives, stricken by " the sickness," as the peasants call all
kinds of disease. Two rows of beds are ranged along the
length and breadth of the cottage, filled with patients of both
sexes, about thirty in number. Sighs, groans, rapid breathing,,
prayers, delirious ravings fill the air, and though everything is
scrupulously clean, it is impossible to keep the air pure in an
unventilated izba full of typhus patients.
After this we visit some of the houses where patients are
lying ill—and it is a difficult matter to find a place where they
are not. Some of these cottages have great pools of water on
the earthen floor, making it simply a mudflat, but here, too,
are fever-stricken patients. In one cottage we visit one of the
doctors, who has himself fallen a victim to the spotted typhus.
The members of the expedition told me that the state
of things throughout the villages was frightful. Prince
Dolgorukov himself came across a family of nine members,
all down with disease, mostly spotted typhus. It was simply
impossible to carry out any method of isolation. One doctor
reported ’551 cases, of which 155 were typhus, in a few days.
In the village of Gavriulki half the population was down, and
with the inset of the thaw matters were growing rapidly
worse.
All this was simply the result of the Government’s policy of
keeping the peasants in ignorance and superstition. The
pestilence was the result of the famine and the insanitary
conditions of the villages. Of these the last is directly trace-
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