Chapter 38: I am Sick!

-an excerpt from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome

B. 1. The narrator had visited the British Museum

to
read up the treatment for some slight disease
that he thought he was suffering from, namely,
hay fever.

2. The diseases that the narrator thought he

already suffered from were typhoid fever, St
Vitus’s Dance, ague, Bright’s disease, cholera
and diphtheria.

3. The narrator felt insulted when he realized

that the only illness he did not suffer from was
housemaid’s knee. Since he believed that he
had every other disease, it felt unfair to him that
he missed out on housemaid’s knee.

4. The narrator thought himself to be a very

interesting case, from a medical point of view.
He felt that medical students would have no
need to ‘walk the hospitals’ if they had him.
Since he had all the ailments known in medicine,
he considered himself a hospital. So, the
medical students would only need to walk
around him and examine him, to graduate.

5. The narrator had walked into the reading room

a happy, healthy man. After realizing that he
had almost every ailment known in medicine, he
felt dejected and crawled out a broken wreck.