place
Mikhaltsevo
also: Михальцево, Mikhaltsevo
The other estate remaining to the princess; the doctor names it as the place where three of her former cooks, now blind from kitchen heat, live on charity, and where her almshouse for old women -- of which she made him nominal chief physician -- was built.
Reading notes
- The Princess §43 three of your former cooks live on charity, who went blind in your kitchens from the heat of the stoves
this is the doctor's first concrete piece of evidence, and it is presented factually and without sensationalism -- three named-by-role former servants, now blind and destitute, discarded once their labor (which caused the injury) was no longer usable. The detail is offered as an indictment of the princess's estate management, not as spectacle; nothing further is made of it beyond establishing the human cost behind her wealth.
- The Princess §46 almshouse for homeless old women, in which you made me into something like a chief physician
Establishes the almshouse (странноприимный дом, literally a 'house for receiving wanderers/strangers') that becomes the doctor's central extended example in sections 46-51: a charitable institution whose actual operation, he argues, existed only for the princess's own performance of virtue during her periodic inspection visits.