feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Brothers Karamazov/section_14_part_3.txt
feat_book_id: The Brothers Karamazov.book 12.chapter 3
feat_summary_id: book 12, chapter 3
feat_summary: {"name": "book 12, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210305110438/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/brothersk/section15/", "summary": "Medical Expertise Three doctors offer contradicting theories about what might have led Dmitri to commit the murder, and about the condition of his mind. One doctor, a German who has lived in the town for many years, tells a story about buying Dmitri a bag of nuts when he was a little boy. Dmitri weeps, evoking a new sympathy in the minds of his listeners", "analysis": ""}
text: Chapter III. The Medical Experts And A Pound Of Nuts
  
  
  The evidence of the medical experts, too, was of little use to the
  prisoner. And it appeared later that Fetyukovitch had not reckoned much
  upon it. The medical line of defense had only been taken up through the
  insistence of Katerina Ivanovna, who had sent for a celebrated doctor from
  Moscow on purpose. The case for the defense could, of course, lose nothing
  by it and might, with luck, gain something from it. There was, however, an
  element of comedy about it, through the difference of opinion of the
  doctors. The medical experts were the famous doctor from Moscow, our
  doctor, Herzenstube, and the young doctor, Varvinsky. The two latter
  appeared also as witnesses for the prosecution.
  
  The first to be called in the capacity of expert was Doctor Herzenstube.
  He was a gray and bald old man of seventy, of middle height and sturdy
  build. He was much esteemed and respected by every one in the town. He was
  a conscientious doctor and an excellent and pious man, a Hernguter or
  Moravian brother, I am not quite sure which. He had been living amongst us
  for many years and behaved with wonderful dignity. He was a kind-hearted
  and humane man. He treated the sick poor and peasants for nothing, visited
  them in their slums and huts, and left money for medicine, but he was as
  obstinate as a mule. If once he had taken an idea into his head, there was
  no shaking it. Almost every one in the town was aware, by the way, that
  the famous doctor had, within the first two or three days of his presence
  among us, uttered some extremely offensive allusions to Doctor
  Herzenstube's qualifications. Though the Moscow doctor asked twenty-five
  roubles for a visit, several people in the town were glad to take
  advantage of his arrival, and rushed to consult him regardless of expense.
  All these had, of course, been previously patients of Doctor Herzenstube,
  and the celebrated doctor had criticized his treatment with extreme
  harshness. Finally, he had asked the patients as soon as he saw them,
  "Well, who has been cramming you with nostrums? Herzenstube? He, he!"
  Doctor Herzenstube, of course, heard all this, and now all the three
  doctors made their appearance, one after another, to be examined.
  
  Doctor Herzenstube roundly declared that the abnormality of the prisoner's
  mental faculties was self-evident. Then giving his grounds for this
  opinion, which I omit here, he added that the abnormality was not only
  evident in many of the prisoner's actions in the past, but was apparent
  even now at this very moment. When he was asked to explain how it was
  apparent now at this moment, the old doctor, with simple-hearted
  directness, pointed out that the prisoner on entering the court had "an
  extraordinary air, remarkable in the circumstances"; that he had "marched
  in like a soldier, looking straight before him, though it would have been
  more natural for him to look to the left where, among the public, the
  ladies were sitting, seeing that he was a great admirer of the fair sex
  and must be thinking much of what the ladies are saying of him now," the
  old man concluded in his peculiar language.
  
  I must add that he spoke Russian readily, but every phrase was formed in
  German style, which did not, however, trouble him, for it had always been
  a weakness of his to believe that he spoke Russian perfectly, better
  indeed than Russians. And he was very fond of using Russian proverbs,
  always declaring that the Russian proverbs were the best and most
  expressive sayings in the whole world. I may remark, too, that in
  conversation, through absent-mindedness he often forgot the most ordinary
  words, which sometimes went out of his head, though he knew them
  perfectly. The same thing happened, though, when he spoke German, and at
  such times he always waved his hand before his face as though trying to
  catch the lost word, and no one could induce him to go on speaking till he
  had found the missing word. His remark that the prisoner ought to have
  looked at the ladies on entering roused a whisper of amusement in the
  audience. All our ladies were very fond of our old doctor; they knew, too,
  that having been all his life a bachelor and a religious man of exemplary
  conduct, he looked upon women as lofty creatures. And so his unexpected
  observation struck every one as very queer.
  
  The Moscow doctor, being questioned in his turn, definitely and
  emphatically repeated that he considered the prisoner's mental condition
  abnormal in the highest degree. He talked at length and with erudition of
  "aberration" and "mania," and argued that, from all the facts collected,
  the prisoner had undoubtedly been in a condition of aberration for several
  days before his arrest, and, if the crime had been committed by him, it
  must, even if he were conscious of it, have been almost involuntary, as he
  had not the power to control the morbid impulse that possessed him.
  
  But apart from temporary aberration, the doctor diagnosed mania, which
  premised, in his words, to lead to complete insanity in the future. (It
  must be noted that I report this in my own words, the doctor made use of
  very learned and professional language.) "All his actions are in
  contravention of common sense and logic," he continued. "Not to refer to
  what I have not seen, that is, the crime itself and the whole catastrophe,
  the day before yesterday, while he was talking to me, he had an
  unaccountably fixed look in his eye. He laughed unexpectedly when there
  was nothing to laugh at. He showed continual and inexplicable
  irritability, using strange words, 'Bernard!' 'Ethics!' and others equally
  inappropriate." But the doctor detected mania, above all, in the fact that
  the prisoner could not even speak of the three thousand roubles, of which
  he considered himself to have been cheated, without extraordinary
  irritation, though he could speak comparatively lightly of other
  misfortunes and grievances. According to all accounts, he had even in the
  past, whenever the subject of the three thousand roubles was touched on,
  flown into a perfect frenzy, and yet he was reported to be a disinterested
  and not grasping man.
  
  "As to the opinion of my learned colleague," the Moscow doctor added
  ironically in conclusion, "that the prisoner would, on entering the court,
  have naturally looked at the ladies and not straight before him, I will
  only say that, apart from the playfulness of this theory, it is radically
  unsound. For though I fully agree that the prisoner, on entering the court
  where his fate will be decided, would not naturally look straight before
  him in that fixed way, and that that may really be a sign of his abnormal
  mental condition, at the same time I maintain that he would naturally not
  look to the left at the ladies, but, on the contrary, to the right to find
  his legal adviser, on whose help all his hopes rest and on whose defense
  all his future depends." The doctor expressed his opinion positively and
  emphatically.
  
  But the unexpected pronouncement of Doctor Varvinsky gave the last touch
  of comedy to the difference of opinion between the experts. In his opinion
  the prisoner was now, and had been all along, in a perfectly normal
  condition, and, although he certainly must have been in a nervous and
  exceedingly excited state before his arrest, this might have been due to
  several perfectly obvious causes, jealousy, anger, continual drunkenness,
  and so on. But this nervous condition would not involve the mental
  aberration of which mention had just been made. As to the question whether
  the prisoner should have looked to the left or to the right on entering
  the court, "in his modest opinion," the prisoner would naturally look
  straight before him on entering the court, as he had in fact done, as that
  was where the judges, on whom his fate depended, were sitting. So that it
  was just by looking straight before him that he showed his perfectly
  normal state of mind at the present. The young doctor concluded his
  "modest" testimony with some heat.
  
  "Bravo, doctor!" cried Mitya, from his seat, "just so!"
  
  Mitya, of course, was checked, but the young doctor's opinion had a
  decisive influence on the judges and on the public, and, as appeared
  afterwards, every one agreed with him. But Doctor Herzenstube, when called
  as a witness, was quite unexpectedly of use to Mitya. As an old resident
  in the town who had known the Karamazov family for years, he furnished
  some facts of great value for the prosecution, and suddenly, as though
  recalling something, he added:
  
  "But the poor young man might have had a very different life, for he had a
  good heart both in childhood and after childhood, that I know. But the
  Russian proverb says, 'If a man has one head, it's good, but if another
  clever man comes to visit him, it would be better still, for then there
  will be two heads and not only one.' "
  
  "One head is good, but two are better," the prosecutor put in impatiently.
  He knew the old man's habit of talking slowly and deliberately, regardless
  of the impression he was making and of the delay he was causing, and
  highly prizing his flat, dull and always gleefully complacent German wit.
  The old man was fond of making jokes.
  
  "Oh, yes, that's what I say," he went on stubbornly. "One head is good,
  but two are much better, but he did not meet another head with wits, and
  his wits went. Where did they go? I've forgotten the word." He went on,
  passing his hand before his eyes, "Oh, yes, _spazieren_."
  
  "Wandering?"
  
  "Oh, yes, wandering, that's what I say. Well, his wits went wandering and
  fell in such a deep hole that he lost himself. And yet he was a grateful
  and sensitive boy. Oh, I remember him very well, a little chap so high,
  left neglected by his father in the back yard, when he ran about without
  boots on his feet, and his little breeches hanging by one button."
  
  A note of feeling and tenderness suddenly came into the honest old man's
  voice. Fetyukovitch positively started, as though scenting something, and
  caught at it instantly.
  
  "Oh, yes, I was a young man then.... I was ... well, I was forty-five
  then, and had only just come here. And I was so sorry for the boy then; I
  asked myself why shouldn't I buy him a pound of ... a pound of what? I've
  forgotten what it's called. A pound of what children are very fond of,
  what is it, what is it?" The doctor began waving his hands again. "It
  grows on a tree and is gathered and given to every one...."
  
  "Apples?"
  
  "Oh, no, no. You have a dozen of apples, not a pound.... No, there are a
  lot of them, and all little. You put them in the mouth and crack."
  
  "Nuts?"
  
  "Quite so, nuts, I say so." The doctor repeated in the calmest way as
  though he had been at no loss for a word. "And I bought him a pound of
  nuts, for no one had ever bought the boy a pound of nuts before. And I
  lifted my finger and said to him, 'Boy, _Gott der Vater_.' He laughed and
  said, '_Gott der Vater_.'... '_Gott der Sohn_.' He laughed again and
  lisped, '_Gott der Sohn_.' '_Gott der heilige Geist_.' Then he laughed and
  said as best he could, '_Gott der heilige Geist_.' I went away, and two
  days after I happened to be passing, and he shouted to me of himself,
  'Uncle, _Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn_,' and he had only forgotten '_Gott
  der heilige Geist_.' But I reminded him of it and I felt very sorry for
  him again. But he was taken away, and I did not see him again. Twenty-
  three years passed. I am sitting one morning in my study, a white-haired
  old man, when there walks into the room a blooming young man, whom I
  should never have recognized, but he held up his finger and said,
  laughing, '_Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn_, and _Gott der heilige Geist_.
  I have just arrived and have come to thank you for that pound of nuts, for
  no one else ever bought me a pound of nuts; you are the only one that ever
  did.' And then I remembered my happy youth and the poor child in the yard,
  without boots on his feet, and my heart was touched and I said, 'You are a
  grateful young man, for you have remembered all your life the pound of
  nuts I bought you in your childhood.' And I embraced him and blessed him.
  And I shed tears. He laughed, but he shed tears, too ... for the Russian
  often laughs when he ought to be weeping. But he did weep; I saw it. And
  now, alas!..."
  
  "And I am weeping now, German, I am weeping now, too, you saintly man,"
  Mitya cried suddenly.
  
  In any case the anecdote made a certain favorable impression on the
  public. But the chief sensation in Mitya's favor was created by the
  evidence of Katerina Ivanovna, which I will describe directly. Indeed,
  when the witnesses _a decharge_, that is, called by the defense, began
  giving evidence, fortune seemed all at once markedly more favorable to
  Mitya, and what was particularly striking, this was a surprise even to the
  counsel for the defense. But before Katerina Ivanovna was called, Alyosha
  was examined, and he recalled a fact which seemed to furnish positive
  evidence against one important point made by the prosecution.
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: book 12, Chapter 3
target: Medical Expertise Three doctors offer contradicting theories about what might have led Dmitri to commit the murder, and about the condition of his mind. One doctor, a German who has lived in the town for many years, tells a story about buying Dmitri a bag of nuts when he was a little boy. Dmitri weeps, evoking a new sympathy in the minds of his listeners