To N. N. Obolonsky, April 1889. Moscow.

1 A very short note, dated only "early April 1889, Moscow" by the editors, addressed to Dr. Nikolai Nikolaevich Obolonsky, the Moscow physician who was treating Chekhov’s elder brother Nikolai Pavlovich Chekhov ("N. P."), a talented but dissolute painter then dying of tuberculosis. Chekhov, himself a trained doctor, is here reporting on his brother’s condition in the clipped, checklist form of a formal medical bulletin rather than writing as a correspondent (1-2).

2 The bulletin proper: evening and morning temperature readings (3-4), followed by a run of short clinical observations – no pain, a mild cough, an induced sweat achieved by having the patient wrap himself in a blanket, good spirits, and appetite (5). It closes with a mock-formal signature, "Physician-in-ordinary Hirsch" (6), and a one-line postscript naming the time of Chekhov’s next visit (7).