ndered what else I had got; turned up St.
Vitus's Dance--found, as I expected, that I had that too,--began to get
interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so
started alphabetically--read up ague, and learnt 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 housemaid's knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of
slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's 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'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 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 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, a