It was dangerous to protest against ill-usage. A number of exiles, goaded to desperation by brutal severity of the acting governor of the province of Tobolsk, respectfully declared that there was a limit to human endurance and that their position had become intolerable. This petition was adjudged “audaciously impudent” and its authors, nineteen in number, were removed to a barren village within the Arctic Circle. Memorials from free and independent bodies were equally unpalatable to the authorities. The medical society of Tver in European Russia, a short distance from Moscow, dared to back up a request made by a number of qualified physicians exiled to Siberia to be allowed to practise in the places of their banishment. A year or two before, the governor-general of Eastern Siberia had reported to the Czar that the number of doctors in the country was utterly insufficient, saying, “In the cities only is it possible to take measures for the preservation of health. In every other part of Eastern Siberia physicians are almost wholly lacking, and the local population is left helpless in its struggle with diphtheria and other contagious diseases which desolate the country.” Two years later the medical school of Tver was swiftly punished for venturing to endorse this statement, and for daring to ask that the prohibition to practise might be rescinded in the case of the doctors so urgently needed. The school was forthwith broken up and two of its members who were in state services were summarily dismissed from their posts.