General Education

(THE LATEST FINDINGS OF DENTAL SCIENCE)

"I’ve had no luck in the tooth line, Osip Frantsych!" sighed a small, scrawny little man in a faded overcoat, patched boots, and gray whiskers that looked as though they had been plucked, gazing obsequiously at his colleague – a fat, corpulent German in a new, expensive overcoat, with a Havana cigar between his teeth. "No luck at all! The devil knows why it is so! Either there are more dentists nowadays than there are teeth... or I’ve got no real talent, plague take it! Fortune’s a hard thing to understand. Take yourself, for example. We finished the course together at the district school, we worked together for that Yid Berka Shvakher, and yet what a difference! You have two houses and a summer cottage, you ride about in a carriage, while I, as you see, am naked as I was born, with nothing to my name. Now why should that be?"

The German, Osip Frantsych, had finished the course at the district school and was stupid as a woodgrouse, but his well-fed look, his fat, and his own houses lent him a vast store of self-assurance. To speak with authority, to philosophize, and to deliver maxims he considered his inalienable right.

"The whole trouble is in ourselves," he sighed authoritatively in answer to his colleague’s complaints. "You’re to blame yourself, Pyotr Ilyich! Don’t be angry, but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: what ruins us specialists is the lack of a general education. We’ve buried ourselves up to our ears in our specialty, and whatever lies beyond it is none of our business. That’s not good, brother! Ah, how not good it is! You imagine that once you’ve learned to pull teeth, you can go on being of use to society? No, brother, with such narrow, one-sided views you won’t get far... not at all, in no way whatsoever. One must have a general education!"

"And what is a general education?" Pyotr Ilyich asked timidly.

The German was at a loss how to answer, and talked a lot of nonsense, but afterward, having had some wine, he loosened up and gave his Russian colleague to understand what he meant by "general education." He explained it not directly, but indirectly, by talking of something else.

"The main thing for the likes of us is a decent establishment," he related. "The public judges only by the establishment. If you’ve got a dirty entryway, cramped rooms, and wretched furniture, that means you’re poor, and if you’re poor, that means nobody comes to you for treatment. Isn’t that so? Why should I go to you for treatment, if nobody goes to you for treatment? Better I go to the one with the large practice! But fit yourself out with velvet furniture and stick electric bells everywhere, and then you’re both experienced and you’ve got a large practice. And setting yourself up with a smart apartment and decent furniture is nothing at all. Furnituremakers nowadays have gotten obliging, they’ve lost their nerve. Credit for as much as you like, even a hundred thousand, especially if you sign the bill ’Doctor So-and-so.’ And you must dress decently too. The public reasons this way: if you’re ragged and live in filth, then a ruble is quite enough for you, but if you’re wearing gold spectacles, with a fat watch-chain, and velvet all around you, then it’s shameful to give you a ruble – one must give five or ten. Isn’t that so?"

"That’s true..." Pyotr Ilyich agreed. "I’ll confess, I set myself up with an establishment at first. I had everything: velvet tablecloths, magazines in the waiting room, and a portrait of Beethoven hanging by the mirror, but... the devil knows what it was! A foolish sort of eclipse came over me. I’d walk about my luxurious apartment and feel ashamed, somehow! As though I’d wandered into someone else’s apartment, or stolen it all... I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t sit in a velvet armchair, and that was that! And then there was my wife besides... a simple peasant woman, she simply wouldn’t understand how to keep up an establishment. One day she’d stink up the whole house with cabbage soup or goose, another day she’d start scouring the candelabra with a brick, another day she’d start washing the floors in the waiting room while patients were there... the devil knows what! Believe me, the moment they sold off that whole establishment at auction, I felt as if I’d come back to life."

"That means you weren’t used to a decent life... Well? One must get used to it! Then, besides the establishment, you need a sign as well. The smaller the man, the bigger his sign ought to be. Isn’t that so? The sign must be enormous, so that it can be seen even from outside town. When you’re driving up to Petersburg or Moscow, before you even see the bell towers, you start seeing the dentists’ signs. And there, brother, the doctors are no match for you and me. On the sign there ought to be gold and silver circles painted, so the public thinks you have medals: more respect that way! Besides that, you need advertising."

"Sell the very trousers off your back, but print an advertisement. Print one every day in all the papers. If it seems to you that plain advertisements aren’t enough, then go in for tricks: have your advertisement printed upside down, order a printing block ’with teeth’ and ’without teeth,’ ask the public not to confuse you with other dentists, publish that you’ve just returned from abroad, that you treat the poor and students free of charge... You should also hang up an advertisement at the railway station, in the buffets... There are plenty of ways!"

"That’s true!" sighed Pyotr Ilyich.

"Many people also say that however you treat the public, it makes no difference... No, it’s not all the same! One must know how to handle the public... Nowadays the public may be educated, but it’s wild and senseless. It doesn’t even know what it wants itself, and it’s very hard to adapt yourself to it. Be the most eminent professor you like, but if you don’t know how to suit its temper, it will sooner go to a horse-doctor than to you... Suppose a lady comes to me with a bad tooth. Do you think she can be received without a bit of theater? Not at all! I frown right away like a learned man and point silently at the chair: scholarly people, you understand, have no time for talk. And my chair has its tricks too: it’s on screws! You turn the screws, and the lady goes up, then down. Then you start poking about in the bad tooth. There’s nothing to it, it just needs pulling and that’s all, but you dig around slowly, deliberately... stick the mirror in her mouth a good ten times, because ladies like it when people fuss over their ailments a long while. The lady squeals, and you say to her: ’Madame! it is my duty to relieve your terrible suffering, and therefore I ask you to trust in me,’ and all that, you understand, grandly, tragically... And on the table in front of the lady there are jaws, skulls, various bones, every sort of instrument, jars with skulls in them – all frightful and mysterious. I myself am in a black gown, like some kind of inquisitor. Beside the chair stands the machine for laughing gas. I never actually use the machine, but it’s frightening all the same! I pull the tooth with the hugest key you ever saw. In general, the bigger and more frightful the instrument, the better. I pull fast, without a hitch."

"And I pull well enough too, Osip Frantsych, but the devil only knows! Just as soon as, you understand, I get the traction on and start pulling the tooth, out of nowhere comes the thought: what if I don’t get it out, or break it? My hand shakes from the thought. And it’s like that constantly!"

"If the tooth breaks, it’s not your fault."

"That’s so, that’s so, and yet still. It’s a disaster if you’ve got no aplomb! There’s nothing worse than not believing in yourself, or having doubts. There was a case like that. I got the forceps on, pulled... pulled, and suddenly, you understand, I feel I’ve been pulling an awfully long while. It ought to have come out by now, but I keep pulling. I turned to stone with terror! I ought to have let go and started fresh, but I keep pulling, pulling... I went out of my mind! The patient sees by my face that I’m, well, weak, that I’m in doubt, and he jumps up and out of pain and spite lands me one with a stool! And another time I went out of my mind again and pulled a healthy tooth instead of the bad one."

"Nonsense, it happens to anyone. Pull the healthy teeth, you’ll get to the bad one eventually. But you’re right, one can’t do without aplomb. A learned man must carry himself like a learned man. The public doesn’t understand, after all, that you and I were never at university. To them, every doctor is a doctor. Botkin’s a doctor, and I’m a doctor, and you’re a doctor. And so you must carry yourself like a doctor. To seem more learned and throw a bit of dust in their eyes, publish a little pamphlet, ’On the Care of the Teeth.’ If you can’t compose it yourself, commission a student. For ten rubles or so he’ll knock you out a preface and yank you some quotations from French authors. I’ve put out three pamphlets myself already. What else? Invent a tooth powder. Order yourself some little boxes with a stamped label, pour into them whatever you like, tie on a wrapper, and go at it: ’Price 2 rubles, beware of imitations.’ Invent an elixir too. Mix up whatever you please, so long as it smells and stings, and there’s your elixir. Don’t set round prices, but something like: elixir No. 1 costs 77 kopecks, No. 2 – 82 kopecks, and so on. That’s more mysterious. Sell tooth brushes with your own stamp on them, a ruble apiece. Have you seen my brushes?"

Pyotr Ilyich nervously scratched the back of his head and paced about the German in agitation...

"Well, there you have it!" he burst out, gesturing. "So that’s how it is! But I can’t do it, I’m not able to! It’s not that I think it’s charlatanry or swindling, but I can’t, my hands aren’t up to it! I’ve tried a hundred times, and nothing ever came of it, damn it all. There you are, well-fed, well-dressed, with houses of your own, while I – get a stool thrown at me! Yes, indeed, it’s a bad business without a general education! You’re right about that, Osip Frantsych! Very bad indeed!"

Notes