Now, when everyone frantically rushed to find new ideals instead of destroyed ones, the thoughts and ideas of N. Leskov, whose works, by and large, have not yet reached the "mass" reader, suddenly turned out to be relevant. Leskov pages are not so easy to overcome, not only because of their uneven style, but also because we, readers, often just "stumble" on "strange" words. As much as the novel "Lefty" by I. S. Leskov has become a textbook, there are also many mysteries lurking here. This is a canopy, and a windmill, and a waterproof, and much,much more. Let's focus on gutta-percha pills, which in the story "use" the "English half-skipper" after the end of his bet (who will drink more) with a Left-handed person: "The doctor ordered him to put him in a warm bath with him, and the apothecary immediately rolled up a gutta-percha pill and put it in his mouth himself, and then both of them took it together and put it on the table." the feather bed and top were covered with a fur coat and left to sweat... And the English half-skipper got up at the same time the next day, swallowed another gutta-percha pill, ate a chicken and a lynx for a light breakfast, washed it down with erfix, and said: "Where is my Russian comrade?" I'm going to look for him." The oddity of this treatment lies in the fact that gutta-percha pills did not exist in nature at all. Gutta-percha, analogs of our rubber, was used to make water hoses, pipes, pumps, and insulation for underwater cables, since the main drawback is that page 110 gutta-percha was that in the air it quickly dried out and then lost its properties. In medicine, gutta-percha was used for various surgical instruments (probes, catheters) and dental fillings. However, the composition of medicines, and even more so pills, gutta-percha was not included. Therefore, at first glance, it seems that N. S. Leskov in" Lefty " mythical gutta-percha pills emphasizes the futility of treatment. But the fact is that the healer with a podlekarem treat ... Read more