Also in 1893 the novella (its text seriously mangled by censors) appeared in the Posrednik (Intermediary) Publishers's series called For Intelligent Readership.

[2] Revolving around philosophical and social conflicts, this story is set in a provincial hospital, specifically in the titular rundown building that houses five male patients suffering from mental illness.

Andrey Yefimitch Ragin is the hospital's chief doctor, and although he holds an esteemed position, he finds himself distressed with the mediocrity surrounding him.

Ivan Gromov, although in a mental ward, was one of the sane members of the town, an eloquent man capable of engaging in the sort of intellectual conversation that the doctor had long been searching for.

Such social displeasure provoked Ragin to spew vile words and even launch a bottle of bromide at the horrified visitors.

Although a life span is the longest thing a person will experience, he felt that once death took place, one simply evaporated and left no trace in the universe.

When Ragin was seen with Gromov more often than not, the town folk began spreading rumors behind his back about his actions instead of asking him why he was speaking to the mental patient.

Furthering the crisis existing in the town created by Chekhov, it was socially acceptable for the patients of the ward to be punished with physical beatings.

Had the town focused its energy on punishing the thieves instead of the mental patients, then perhaps their health care system would have been comparable to that of a larger city.

All of the problems existing in the hospital were not unknown to Dr. Ragin but he felt no use in improving medical conditions because at the end of the day, death was inevitable so why prolong a life that had an expiration date.

Even though a young Ragin had aspirations for a clerical career, he did not demonstrate the compassion of a priest when dealing with his patients, neglecting to perform surgery.

Those words were easily said at the point in the story which he could leave the ward upon desire, but once his freedom was removed, he understood the suffering experienced by Gromov.

6, which no one should read late at night, Chekhov has given us a picture of an insane asylum, which, if the conditions there depicted are true to life, would indicate that some parts of Russia have not advanced one step since Gogol wrote Revizor...

The fear of death, which to an intensely intellectual people like the Russians, is an obsession of terror, and shadows all their literature,—it appears all through Tolstoi's diary and novels,—is analysed in many forms by Chekhov.

[5]Literary critic Edmund Wilson called it one of Chekhov's "masterpieces, a fable of the whole situation of the frustrated intellectuals of the Russia of the eighties and nineties".

Dezember 2024 a Swiss feature film adaptation of the piece named "Ward Six" was announced to be shot in English in autumn 2025.