the following is an extract from a book called "three men in a boat" by Jerome K. Jerome, the book is amazing, this is from the first 2 pages
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 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.
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 it 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 is 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?"
I said:
"I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you
might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got
housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not
got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got."
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