Notes from a Dead House (Vintage Classics)

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I repeat: the prisoners could not praise their doctors highly enough, looked upon them as fathers, respected them. Everyone saw kindness from them, heard gentle words; and a prisoner, having been rejected by the whole world, valued that, because he could see how unfeigned and sincere those gentle words and that kindness were. They might not have been; no one would have asked questions if the doctors had treated them differently, that is, more rudely and inhumanly: consequently, they were kind out of genuine humanity. And, naturally, they understood that a sick man, whether or not he was a prisoner, needs such a thing, for instance, as fresh air, like any other sick man, even of the highest rank.