concept
Mock-Medical Latin Narration
mock-medical Latin
The comic device of narrating a personal or domestic situation using the formal Latin vocabulary of prescriptions and clinical case notes. Chekhov, a physician, builds the first half of this diptych entirely from this register.
Reading notes
- Two Novels §2 recipe
The story's central device: a husband narrates his marriage entirely in the clipped Latin formulas of a doctor's prescription and case notes. 'Recipe' opens every prescription of the era, literally 'take.'
- At the Bedside of the Sick Man §6 in concreto
Latin, "in the concrete case / in actuality" -- the doctors' pseudo-clinical jargon (glossed by the text itself as "in actuality") is the sketch's comic device: a discussion of political "regimen" dressed up as a bedside consultation.