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I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch. I read all I came to read and then I began to study diseases, generally, turning the leaves idly.

I came to typhoid fever, read the symptoms and discovered I must have had it for months without knowing it. Cholera I had with severe complications and diphtheria I must have been born with. I was relieved to find that Bright’s disease I had only in a modified form and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. The only disease I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.

I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view. I was hospital in myself. All students need do would be to walk round me and after that take their diploma.

I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. I think now that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but cannot account for it.

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man, I crawled out a decrepit wreck.