Book Nine: 1812 - Chapter XVI

by Leo Tolstoy

　　On receiving news of Natasha's illness, the countess, though notquite well yet and still weak, went to Moscow with Petya and therest of the household, and the whole family moved from MaryaDmitrievna's house to their own and settled down in town.

　　Natasha's illness was so serious that, fortunately for her and forher parents, the consideration of all that had caused the illness, herconduct and the breaking off of her engagement, receded into thebackground. She was so ill that it was impossible for them to considerin how far she was to blame for what had happened. She could not eator sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors made themfeel, was in danger. They could not think of anything but how tohelp her. Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talkedmuch in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, andprescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases knownto them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that theycould not know the disease Natasha was suffering from, as no diseasesuffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has hisown peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel,complicated disease, unknown to medicine- not a disease of thelungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medicalbooks, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinationsof the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occurto the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable towork his charms) because the business of their lives was to cure,and they received money for it and had spent the best years of theirlives on that business. But, above all, that thought was kept out oftheir minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful, as infact they were to the whole Rostov family. Their usefulness did notdepend on making the patient swallow substances for the most partharmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible, as they were given insmall doses), but they were useful, necessary, and indispensablebecause they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and of those wholoved her- and that is why there are, and always will be,pseudo-healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. Theysatisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy,and that something should be done, which is felt by those who aresuffering. They satisfied the need seen in its most elementary form ina child, when it wants to have a place rubbed that has been hurt. Achild knocks itself and runs at once to the arms of its mother ornurse to have the aching spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels betterwhen this is done. The child cannot believe that the strongest andwisest of its people have no remedy for its pain, and the hope ofrelief and the expression of its mother's sympathy while she rubsthe bump comforts it. The doctors were of use to Natasha becausethey kissed and rubbed her bump, assuring her that it would soonpass if only the coachman went to the chemist's in the Arbat and got apowder and some pills in a pretty box of a ruble and seventy kopeks,and if she took those powders in boiled water at intervals ofprecisely two hours, neither more nor less.

　　What would Sonya and the count and countess have done, how wouldthey have looked, if nothing had been done, if there had not beenthose pills to give by the clock, the warm drinks, the chickencutlets, and all the other details of life ordered by the doctors, thecarrying out of which supplied an occupation and consolation to thefamily circle? How would the count have borne his dearly loveddaughter's illness had he not known that it was costing him a thousandrubles, and that he would not grudge thousands more to benefit her, orhad he not known that if her illness continued he would not grudge yetother thousands and would take her abroad for consultations there, andhad he not been able to explain the details of how Metivier and Fellerhad not understood the symptoms, but Frise had, and Mudrov haddiagnosed them even better? What would the countess have done hadshe not been able sometimes to scold the invalid for not strictlyobeying the doctor's orders?

　　"You'll never get well like that," she would say, forgetting hergrief in her vexation, "if you won't obey the doctor and take yourmedicine at the right time! You mustn't trifle with it, you know, orit may turn to pneumonia," she would go on, deriving much comfort fromthe utterance of that foreign word, incomprehensible to others as wellas to herself.

　　What would Sonya have done without the glad consciousness that shehad not undressed during the first three nights, in order to beready to carry out all the doctor's injunctions with precision, andthat she still kept awake at night so as not to miss the proper timewhen the slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box had to beadministered? Even to Natasha herself it was pleasant to see that somany sacrifices were being made for her sake, and to know that she hadto take medicine at certain hours, though she declared that nomedicine would cure her and that it was all nonsense. And it waseven pleasant to be able to show, by disregarding the orders, that shedid not believe in medical treatment and did not value her life.

　　The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, andregardless of her grief-stricken face joked with her. But when hehad gone into another room, to which the countess hurriedly followedhim, he assumed a grave air and thoughtfully shaking his head saidthat though there was danger, he had hopes of the effect of thislast medicine and one must wait and see, that the malady was chieflymental, but... And the countess, trying to conceal the action fromherself and from him, slipped a gold coin into his hand and alwaysreturned to the patient with a more tranquil mind.

　　The symptoms of Natasha's illness were that she ate little, sleptlittle, coughed, and was always low-spirited. The doctors said thatshe could not get on without medical treatment, so they kept her inthe stifling atmosphere of the town, and the Rostovs did not move tothe country that summer of 1812.

　　In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powdersout of the little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss who wasfond of such things made a large collection, and in spite of beingdeprived of the country life to which she was accustomed, youthprevailed. Natasha's grief began to be overlaid by the impressionsof daily life, it ceased to press so painfully on her heart, itgradually faded into the past, and she began to recover physically.