Three Men in a Boat To Say Nothing of the Dog

Chapter I Three InvalidsSufferings of George and Harris.A victim to one hundred and seven fatal maladies.Useful prescriptions.Cure for liver complaint in children.We agree that we are overworked and need rest.A week on the rolling deep?George suggests the River.Montmorency lodges an objection.Original motion carried by majority of three to one. * * * There were four of usGeorge, an 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 thathehad 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 touchhay 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 forgot which was the first distemper I plunged intosome 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 horr∨ 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 monthswithout knowing itwondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus' 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 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 house-maid's knee. I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got house-maid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After awhile, 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 house-maid'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 woJerome, Jerome K. is the author of 'Three Men in a Boat To Say Nothing of the Dog', published 2001 under ISBN 9780765341617 and ISBN 0765341611.