Accordingly, the Minister of War, Vannovski, issued a rescript dated April 10, 1882, to the following effect: _First_, to limit the number of Jewish physicians and _feldshers[1]_ in the Military Department to five per cent of the general number of medical men.
_Second_, to stop appointing Jews on the medical service in the military districts of Western Russia, and to transfer the surplus over and above five per cent into the Eastern districts.
_Third_, to appoint Jewish physicians only in those contingents of the army in which the budget calls for at least two physicians, with the proviso that the second physician must be a Christian.
[Footnote 1: See p.

167, n.

2.] The reason for these provisions was stated in a most offensive form: It is necessary to stop the constant growth of the number of physicians of the Mosaic persuasion in the Military Department, in view of their deficient conscientiousness in discharging their duties and their unfavorable influence upon the sanitary service in the army.
This revolting affront had the effect that many Jewish physicians handed in their resignations immediately.

The resignation of one of these physicians, the well-known novelist Yaroshevski, was couched in such emphatic terms, and parried the moral blow directed at the Jewish professional men with such dignity that the Minister of War deemed it necessary to put the author on trial.

Among other things, Yaroshevski wrote: So long as the aspersions cast upon the Jewish physicians so pitilessly are not removed, every superfluous minute spent by them in serving this Department will merely add to their disgrace.