He pretends that he just doesn't see: Chekhov's doctors

It's no surprise that many of the protagonists in Anton Chekhov's stories are doctors, but what does surprise is the range of characters and types among the doctors whom Chekhov portrays - in his career as a physician, he must have met and known a wide variety of types, probably a more disparate group that doctors today who tend to be more specialized I'd think, and it's also obvious, from a # of Chekhov's stories, that physician was one of the few career choices open to an educated young man in 19th-century Russia - it's not that all doctors were enamoured of the medical profession or even of medical science, it's just that they had an aptitude and had few options. We see this in at least 3 of the stories in the Pevear-Volokhonsky collection: one (title?) is about an elderly medical profession, dry as a husk and burned out, regretful that he has not become famous or properly recognized (and compensated) for his accomplishments, such as they are; another, in The Fidget, very dedicated physician, misunderstood and unappreciated by his pseudo-artistic wife, dies in the service of medicine. A third, in the famous story (or novella, if you like) Ward No. 6, is perhaps the most contemptuous of Chekhov's physicians; this story an absolute indictment of the the medical care and conditions in 19th-century Russia, particularly in rural Russia (an ever-present Chekhov theme, the misery and loneliness of life far from the cultural centers) and particularly in the mental ward. The young doctor who comes to the hospital at first seems to us like he may be a force for good a reformer - clearing out detritus of his corrupt predecessor, who took bribes, offered no treatment at all to mental patients, allowed them to live in squalor. But we soon see that this new guy is perhaps even worse - because he seems to realize and to care about the patient conditions, but just shrugs his shoulders and "pretends that he just doesn't see" - prefers to spend his afternoons reading and thinking (he's one of the doctors who wished he could hae followed another profession, and it would have been better if he had) and ultimately to speak with his one friend, smoking and drinking to oblivion - all his high-flown words of philosophy and noble thoughts do nothing to help the patients who are in his so-called care. By end of novella, he will get what's due him.