To P. G. Rozanov, 1887. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow in the last days of March 1887, on the eve of a journey south, to Dr. Pavel Grigoryevich Rozanov, a provincial physician and colleague ("collega") whom Chekhov knew from medical circles. Rozanov had evidently proposed a periodical to be called "Vrachebny byt" ("The Medical Life" / "The Doctor’s Way of Life") and had recently delivered a paper at a medical congress that Chekhov attended.

2 The letter mixes professional and personal registers typical of Chekhov’s correspondence with fellow physicians: a candid, discouraging verdict on Rozanov’s proposed journal (not enough usable material, and a dismissal of one prospective contributor, "Dr. Eberman," as a "half-literate maniac"), a counter-suggestion that Rozanov aim for a purely medical publication instead, and gentle criticism of the legal grounding of Rozanov’s congress paper. It closes with an address, a promise to correspond, and a wry remark on the inconvenience of Rozanov’s remote location – plus the addressee notation "On the reverse," preserved from the original as a fragment of the letter’s physical form (evidently written on the back of a card or the outside of the folded sheet).