The znakharka and the feldsher represent two very different periods in the history of medical science—­the magical and the scientific.  The Russian peasantry have still many conceptions which belong to the former.  The great majority of them are already quite willing, under ordinary circumstances, to use the scientific means of healing; but as soon as a violent epidemic breaks out, and the scientific means prove unequal to the occasion, the old faith revives, and recourse is had to magical rites and incantations.  Of these rites many are very curious.  Here, for instance, is one which had been performed in a village near which I afterwards lived for some time.  Cholera had been raging in the district for several weeks.  In the village in question no case had yet occurred, but the inhabitants feared that the dreaded visitor would soon arrive, and the following ingenious contrivance was adopted for warding off the danger.  At midnight, when the male population was supposed to be asleep, all the maidens met in nocturnal costume, according to a preconcerted plan, and formed a procession.  In front marched a girl, holding an Icon.  Behind her came her companions, dragging a sokha—­the primitive plough commonly used by the peasantry—­by means of a long rope.  In this order the procession made the circuit of the entire village, and it was confidently believed that the cholera would not be able to overstep the magical circle thus described.  Many of the males probably knew, or at least suspected, what was going on; but they prudently remained within doors, knowing well that if they should be caught peeping indiscreetly at the mystic ceremony, they would be unmercifully beaten by those who were taking part in it.

This custom is doubtless a survival of old pagan superstitions.  The introduction of the Icon is a modern innovation, which illustrates that curious blending of paganism and Christianity which is often to be met with in Russia, and of which I shall have more to say in another chapter.

Sometimes, when an epidemic breaks out, the panic produced takes a more dangerous form.  The people suspect that it is the work of the doctors, or that some ill-disposed persons have poisoned the wells, and no amount of reasoning will convince them that their own habitual disregard of the most simple sanitary precautions has something to do with the phenomenon.  I know of one case where an itinerant photographer was severely maltreated in consequence of such suspicions; and once, in St. Petersburg, during the reign of Nicholas I., a serious riot took place.  The excited populace had already thrown several doctors out of the windows of the hospital, when the Emperor arrived, unattended, in an open carriage, and quelled the disturbance by his simple presence, aided by his stentorian voice.