ses of medicine, usually a physic, knowing full well
that to the average patient, the stronger the medicine and the more of
it he gets, the better the treatment is, and a large percentage of the
recoveries effected by these felchers is more or less a matter of faith
rather than physic or medicine.

The regularly licensed practitioners as a rule have great contempt for
these felchers, but the fact remains that in the small communities where
they practice the felcher accomplishes a great amount of good, for
having traveled considerably and devoted some time to the study of
medicine he is at least superior in intelligence to the average peasant,
and, therefore, better qualified to meet such emergencies as may arise.

This lack of medical practitioners, coupled with the apathy of the
peasants regarding sanitary precautions and their unsanitary methods of
living accounts to some extent for the violence and spread of plagues,
so common throughout Russia.

Regarding the spread of disease and plagues through Russia caused as
above stated by lack of sanitary conditions, a word or two further would
not be amiss. In the province of Archangel, for example, a great
majority of houses are entirely of log construction, built and modelled
throughout by the owner, and perhaps some of his good neighbors. They
are really a remarkable example of what may be done in the way of
construction without the use of nails and of the modern improved methods
of house construction. It is an actual fact that these simple peasants,
equipped only with their short hand axes, with the use of which they are
adepts, can cut down trees, hew the logs and build their homes
practically without the use of any nails whatever. The logs, of course,
are first well seasoned before they are put into the house itself and
when they are joined together they are practically air tight, but to
make sure of this fact the cracks are sealed tight with moss hammered
into the chinks. Next the windows of these houses are always double,
that is, there is one window on the outside of the frame and another
window on the inside. Needless to say, during the winter these windows
are practically never opened.

During the winter months the entire family--and families in this country
are always large--eat, sleep, and live in one room of the house in which
the huge brick home-made stove is located. In addition to the human
beings living in the room there are often a half dozen or more ch