A Prescription for Life – Jerome K. Jerome

I remember going to the British Museum one day to research some sort of illness that I thought might be
hay fever. I picked up the medical encyclopedia and read all about hay fever. I idly turned the leaves, and
began to indolently study diseases in general. I forget which was the first disease I plunged into—some
dreadful disease, I know. But before I had glanced half down the list of ‘warning symptoms’, it dawned upon
me that I had all of them.

I sat for a while, frozen with horror; and then, in utter despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to
typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever for months without knowing it.
I then wondered what else I had got; turned up *St. Vitus’s Dance—found that I had that too. I began
to get interested in my case, and decided to investigate
it thoroughly. So I started alphabetically. Read up
ague (malaria), and learned that I was sickening for
it, and that the worst stage would commence in about
two weeks. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I
had only in a mild form. Cholera I had, with serious
complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been
born with. I carefully went through all 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 kind of insult. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee?

Why was this illness
left out? After a
while, however, less
greedy feelings took
over. I reflected that
I had every other
known disease in
the pharmacology.
I grew less selfish,
and determined
to do without
housemaid’s knee.
Gout, in its worst
form, had seized me without my knowledge; and
zymosis I had clearly been suffering from my boyhood.
There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I
concluded that 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. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel
it. It had stopped beating. I patted myself all over my
body. But I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to
look at my tongue. I could only see the tip, and the only
thing that I could gain was to feel more certain than
before that I had scarlet fever.
I had walked into that reading-room as a happy, healthy
man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.
I went to my doctor. He is an old chum of mine, and
feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about
the weather, all for nothing, when I think I am sick. So I thought I would return the favour by going to him
now. “What a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall
have me. He will get more practice out of me than out
of seventeen hundreds of his everyday patients, with
only one or two diseases each.” So I went straight up
and saw him, and he said:
“Well, what’s the matter with you?”
I said:
“I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you
what the matter is. Life is brief, and you might pass
away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is not
the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee.
Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you;
but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything
else, however, I have got.”
And I told him how I came to discover it all.
Then he examined me, and clutched my wrist to check
my pulse, and then he hit me over the chest when I
wasn’t expecting it—a cowardly thing to do, I think,
and immediately afterwards butted me on the side
of my head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a
prescription, and folded it up and gave it to me, and I
put it in my pocket and went out.
I did not open it. I took it to the nearest pharmacy, and
handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back.
He said he didn’t keep
it.
I said: “You are a
chemist?”
He said: “I am a
chemist. If I were a
co-operative stores
and family hotel
combined, I might be
able to help you. Being
only a chemist limits
me.”

I read the prescription. This was what it said:
“A balanced diet, with water every couple of hours. A
ten-mile walk every morning. To bed at sharp 11 o’clock
every night. And don’t stuff up your head with things
you don’t understand.”
I followed the directions, with the happy result—
speaking for myself—that my life was saved and is still
going on.

The Author

Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) was an English writer and humorist. Born in a poor family, he faced financial difficulties and personal hardships throughout his early life. Despite these challenges, he pursued a career in writing and acting. His warm and humorous style won him great  acclaim. This extract is taken from Three Men in a Boat (1889), Jerome’s comic masterpiece, which is his most celebrated work.

Let’s Rewind

1. What happened when the narrator began reading the medical encyclopaedia?
2. How did the narrator’s visit to the doctor change his perspective on life?
3. What aspect of the narrator’s character is revealed in the story?
4. How does the narrator’s experience bring out the risks of self-diagnosis and the benefits of taking medical advice?
5. Have you heard of the saying, ‘A healthy mind in a healthy body’. What do you think it means in the light of ‘A Prescription for Life?’

Activity 1

The events of the story have been jumbled. Rewrite them in the correct order.

1. He decides to consult his doctor for help.
2. The doctor examines him and gives him a prescription.
3. The chemist reads the prescription and finds it interesting.
4. Jerome takes the prescription back and reads it for the first time.
5. Jerome leaves the pharmacy feeling hopeful.
6. Jerome goes to the British Museum to learn more about an illness.
7. He expresses his fear to the doctor.
8. Jerome takes the prescription to the pharmacy.
9. There he reads the medical encyclopaedia and believes he has all the illnesses mentioned in it.
10. It was some common sense advice on proper diet and exercise.