Synthesized answer
The president uses a superstition to predict if a new treatment would cure his catarrh. He would decide that it would cure him if the number of steps from the door to his chair would divide by three [1]. He made 26 steps but managed to take a 27th step just by his chair [1].
The passages describe the president's habit of making guesses by curious means to answer self-put questions [1, 3]. The specific superstition used to predict his catarrh cure involved counting steps [1].
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
ve air. He was in the habit of making guesses in answer to all sorts of self-put questions by different curious means. Just now he had asked whether the new treatment would be beneficial, and had decided that it would cure his catarrh if the number of steps from the door to his chair would divide by three. He made 26 steps, but managed to get in a 27th just by his chair. The figures of the president and the members in their uniforms, with gold-embroidered collars, looked very imposing. They seemed to feel this themselves, and, as if overpowered by their own grandeur, hurriedly…
efore six p.m. on the little red-haired Clara Vasilievna, with whom he had begun a romance in the country last summer. He went into a private room, latched the door, took a pair of dumb-bells out of a cupboard, moved his arms 20 times upwards, downwards, forwards, and sideways, then holding the dumb-bells above his head, lightly bent his knees three times. “Nothing keeps one going like a cold bath and exercise,” he said, feeling the biceps of his right arm with his left hand, on the third finger of which he wore a gold ring. He had still to do the moulinee movement (for he always went…
ry one got up as the members stepped on to the platform. Among them the president, with his muscles and fine whiskers. Next came the gloomy member of the Court, who was now more gloomy than ever, having met his brother-in-law, who informed him that he had just called in to see his sister (the member’s wife), and that she had told him that there would be no dinner there. “So that, evidently, we shall have to call in at a cook shop,” the brother-in-law added, laughing. “It is not at all funny,” said the gloomy member, and became gloomier still. Then at last came the third member of the…
te.” “It is extraordinary. He ought to be ashamed of himself,” said the member, angrily, and taking out a cigarette. This member, a very precise man, had had an unpleasant encounter with his wife in the morning, because she had spent her allowance before the end of the month, and had asked him to give her some money in advance, but he would not give way to her, and they had a quarrel. The wife told him that if he were going to behave so, he need not expect any dinner; there would be no dinner for him at home. At this point he left, fearing that she might carry out her threat, for…
as found in Smelkoff’s stomach. “He could drink, and no mistake,” again whispered the merchant, who had just waked up. The reading of this report had taken a full hour, but it had not satisfied the public prosecutor, for, when it had been read through and the president turned to him, saying, “I suppose it is superfluous to read the report of the examination of the internal organs?” he answered in a severe tone, without looking at the president, “I shall ask to have it read.” He raised himself a little, and showed by his manner that he had a right to have this report read, and would…