[Footnote 1: This selection, with _On Comic Songs_, which follows, is
taken from _Three Men in a Boat_, by Jerome K. Jerome The complete title
of the book is _Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog_)]
_By_ JEROME K. JEROME
There were four of us--George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself,
and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking and talking about
how bad we were--bad from a medical point of view I mean, of course.
We were all feeling seedy, and we were getting quite nervous about it.
Harris said he felt such extraordinary fits of giddiness come over him
at times, that he hardly knew what he was doing; and then George said
that _he_ had fits of giddiness, too, and hardly knew what he was doing.
With me, it was my liver that was out of order. I knew it was my liver
that was out of order, because I had just been reading a patent
liver-pill circular, in which were detailed the various symptoms by
which a man could tell when his liver was out of order. I had them all.
It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine
advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am
suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with, in its most
virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly
with all the sensations that I have ever felt.
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment
for some slight ailment of which I had a touch--hay fever, I fancy it
was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an
unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began indolently to
study diseases generally. I forget which was the first distemper I
plunged into--some fearful, devastating scourge, I know--and, before I
had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne
in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for a while, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of
despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever--read
the symptoms--discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for
months without knowing it--wondered what else I had got; turned up Saint
Vitus's Dance--found, as I had expected, that I had that, too--began to
get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and
so started alphabetically--read up ague, and learned that I was
sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about
another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only
in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for
years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed
to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six
letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was
housemaid's knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort
of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious
reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I
reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and
grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout,
in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my
being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from
boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there
was nothing else the matter with me. I sat and pondered. I thought what
an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an
acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to "walk
the hospitals," if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they
need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diplomas.
Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I
felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of
a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I
made a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart.
I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been
induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the
time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted
myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I
went a bit round each side, and a little way up the back. But I could
not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out
as far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it
with the other. I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I
could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had
scarlet fever.
I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out
a decrepit wreck.
I went to my medical man. He was an old chum of mine, and feels my
pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for
nothing, when I fancy I'm ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn
by going to him now. "What a doctor wants," I said, "is practice. He
shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen
hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two
diseases each." So I went straight up and saw him, and he said:
"Well, what's the matter with you?"