All the doctors in Polotzk attended her in turn, and one doctor came all the way from Vitebsk.
Every country practitioner for miles around was consulted, every quack, every old wife who knew a charm.

The apothecaries ransacked their shops for drugs the names of which they had forgotten, and kind neighbors brought in their favorite remedies.

There were midnight prayers in the synagogue for my mother, and petitions at the graves of her parents; and one awful night when she was near death, three pious mothers who had never lost a child came to my mother's bedside and bought her, for a few kopecks, for their own, so that she might gain the protection of their luck, and so be saved.
Still my poor mother lay on her bed, suffering and wasting.

The house assumed a look of desolation.

Everybody went on tiptoe; we talked in whispers; for weeks at a time there was no laughter in our home.