{"id":23886,"date":"2014-08-24T00:01:58","date_gmt":"2014-08-24T05:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23886"},"modified":"2014-08-23T12:38:36","modified_gmt":"2014-08-23T17:38:36","slug":"qotd-hypochondria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/08\/24\/qotd-hypochondria\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Hypochondria"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch \u2014 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 \u2014 some fearful, devastating scourge, I know \u2014 and, before I had glanced half down the list of \u201cpremonitory symptoms,\u201d it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 read the symptoms \u2014 discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it \u2014 wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus\u2019s Dance \u2014 found, as I expected, that I had that too, \u2014 began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically \u2014 read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright\u2019s 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\u2019s knee.<\/p>\n

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn\u2019t I got housemaid\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cwalk the hospitals,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.<\/p>\n

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)<\/em><\/a>, 1889.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,66,57,41],"tags":[52,948,243],"class_list":["post-23886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-health-science","category-humour","category-quotations","tag-absurd","tag-jkjerome","tag-medicine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6dg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23886"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27496,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23886\/revisions\/27496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}