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Three Invalids Three InvalidsSufferings of George and HarrisA victim to one hundred and seven fatal maladiesUseful prescriptionsCure for liver complaint in childrenWe agree that we are overworked, and need restA week on the rolling deep?George suggests the riverMontmorency lodges an objectionOriginal motion carried by majority of three to one. There were four of usGeorge, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency. We were sitting in my room, smoking, and talking about how bad we werebad 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 intosome fearful, devastating scourge, I knowand, 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 feverread the symptomsdiscovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing itwondered what else I had got; turned up St Vituss Dancefound, as I expected, that I had that toobegan to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabeticallyread up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Brights 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 diptheria 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 housemaids knee. I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadnt I got housemaids 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 housemaids 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 |
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