: The young doctor is having a difficult birth for the first time. It is not the textbook that helps save the mother and the child, but the advice of an experienced midwife. The doctor understands that theoretical knowledge can never be compared with experience.

The narration is on behalf of a young doctor, whose name is not mentioned in the story. The action takes place in 1917.

The young doctor began to get used to life in the N-th hospital. Autumn came, the roads became impassable, and few patients came to receive. One rainy evening brought a woman with a difficult birth. So far, the doctor has dealt only with laryngitis and catarrh of the stomach. He had little idea of ​​childbirth, but did not dare to send a woman in labor in the city - he was afraid to disgrace himself before the midwives.

The woman in labor had a transverse position of the fetus.

I am alone, under my arms a tormented woman; I am responsible for it. But I don’t know how to help her, because I saw him only twice in my life near childbirth ...

An experienced midwife Anna Nikolaevna suggested that you need to make a "turn on the leg" - to turn the fetus in the womb by the leg. Having ordered the mother to be euthanized with chloroform, the doctor rushed to his apartment to leaf through the textbook “Operational obstetrics”, but this did not help him much, only terrible phrases about the danger and undesirable consequences remained in my head. The doctor finally ceased to understand what kind of turn he should make - combined or direct.

Anna Nikolaevna helped, telling in detail how the predecessor of the doctor, an experienced surgeon, made turns of the fetus. This ten-minute story gave the doctor more than all the books on obstetrics read. Having entered a hand inside, the doctor felt for the baby’s leg and carefully turned, guided not by the advice from the textbooks, but by a sense of proportion, "without which the doctor is worthless."

Both the mother and the newborn survived, and the doctor received the restrained praise of Anna Nikolaevna. Returning to his apartment late at night, he read the textbook again, and all the dark places became completely clear to him. Only here, in the wilderness, the doctor realized that real knowledge comes only with experience.