J.A.F. Team

"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 to indolently

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 awhile, 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 St.

Vitus's Dance - found, as I 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 learnt 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 I

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 diploma".

 

-Three Men in a Boat

 

But in all seriousness, hope you feel better soon. And congrats on 10 years - you're one day my senior.

I loled so hard at that, GSR.

 

Seriously, though, get well soon, xccj.

 

-Gata

Go you!

 

-CF