We were all feeling bad, and we were quite nervous about it. Harris said he had such a very bad headache that he hardly knew what he was doing. And then George said that he had a headache too. As for me, it was my liver that was out of order. I read about the various symptoms of a sick liver in a circular that offered liver-pills. I had them all.
It is a most extraordinary thing, but when I read a medicine advertisement I usually come to the conclusion that I am suffering from the disease that was described.
One day I went to the British Museum to read about hay fever [3], I fancy I had it [4]. I took the book, and read all I needed; and then I idly turned the leaves, and began to study diseases, generally. Immediately I understood that I had some fearful, devastating illness.
I sat for a while, frozen with horror; and then, in despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever [5] – 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 [6] – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – and so started alphabetically. I had every malady they wrote about! The only malady I had not got was housemaid’s knee [7].
I felt rather hurt about this at first. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee? After a while, however, 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. There were no more diseases after zymosis [8], so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me [9].
I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view! 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 [10]. I pulled out my watch. 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 could not feel or hear anything. I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck [11].
I went to my doctor. He is an old friend of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather. “What a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall have me.” So he said:
“Well, what’s the matter with you?”
I said:
“I will not take up your time with telling you what is the matter with me. 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.”
Then he examined me, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’t expecting it. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.
I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s [12], and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back.
I read the prescription. It said:
“1 lb. [13] beefsteak, with 1 pt. [14] bitter beer every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.”
I followed the directions, with the happy result – my life was saved, and is still going on.
But going back to the liver-pill circular, I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being ‘a general disinclination to work of any kind [15]’.
What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell [16]. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. My family did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they thought it was laziness.
“Are you still sleeping,” they would say, “get up and do something for your living, can’t you?” – not knowing, of course, that I was ill.
We sat there for half-an-hour, describing to each other our maladies. I explained to George and William Harris how I felt when I got up in the morning, and William Harris told us how he felt when he went to bed; and George told us how he felt in the night.
Suddenly, Mrs. Poppets [17] knocked at the door to know if we were ready for supper. We smiled sadly, and decided to eat a little.
I seemed took no interest in my my food an unusual thing for me – and didn’t want any usual thing for me – and I didn’t want any cheese.
We refilled our glasses, lit our pipes, and resumed the discussion upon our state of health.
“What we want is rest,” said Harris.
“Rest and a complete change,” said George. “The overstrain upon our brains has produced a general depression. Changes and absence of the necessity for thought will restore the mental equilibrium.”
“If you want rest and change,” said Harris, “let’s make a sea trip.”
I objected to the sea trip strongly. I was afraid for George. George said that he felt sure we should both be ill.
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is seasick – on land. At sea, you come across [18] plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick.
For myself [19], I have discovered an excellent preventive against sea-sickness, in balancing myself. You stand in the centre of the deck, and you move your body about, so as to keep it always straight. When the front of the ship rises, you lean forward, till the deck almost touches your nose; and when its back end gets up, you lean backwards. This is all very well for an hour or two; but you can’t balance yourself for a week.
George said:
“Let’s go up the river.”
He said we should have fresh air, exercise and quiet; and the hard work would give us a good appetite, and make us sleep well.
Harris said he didn’t think George ought to do anything that would make him sleepier than he always was, as it might be dangerous. He might just as well be dead, and so save his board and lodging [20].
Harris and I both said it was a good idea of George’s. The only one who was not struck with the suggestion was Montmorency.
“It’s all very well for you fellows,” he says; “you like it, but I don’t. There’s nothing for me to do. If you ask me, I call the whole thing foolishness.”
We were three to one [21], however.
Chapter II
We pulled out the maps, and discussed plans. We arranged to start on the following Saturday from Kingston [22]. Harris and I would go down in the morning, and take the boat up to Chertsey [23], and George would meet us there.
Should