Behind a wall of nettles and neglect stands a wing of the provincial hospital where the mad are kept, beaten by a former soldier, visited by no one who matters. This 1892 novella follows Doctor Ragin, a man of intellect who has retreated into Stoic philosophy and passive indifference, until conversations with a paranoid patient unsettle his detachment. The ward is czarist Russia in miniature, a place where reason offers no protection and complicity wears the mask of tolerance. Chekhov, himself a physician, knew that the distance between doctor and patient is thinner than either believes. When Ragin crosses from one side to the other, the story arrives at its devastating conclusion. Apathy is not wisdom. It is the disease.