THE PATENT MEDICINE ADVERTISEMENT.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 475, 28 May 1890, Page 5

THE PATENT MEDICINE ADVERTISEMENT.

Mr Jerome K. Jerome, in his entertaining book, ‘ Three Men in a Boat.’ which is brimming over with fun and humorous sketches, gives the following amusing account of the effects of reading the advertisements of patent medicines lb is a mosb extraordinary thing, bub 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 mosb 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 ailmenb of which I had a touch—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—some 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 sab for a while, frozen with horror ; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever—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—found, as I expected, that I had that too—began to geb interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learnt that L was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in 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 diptheria 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 felb rather hurt about this at first, it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got a housemaid’s knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other know 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, bad seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from my 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 hoepitale,’ if they had me. I was an hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round, me, and, after that, take their diploma.