Housemaid's knee

[LNM]

Just got a WIS and after an hours browsing I can only conclude that thats the only ailment my W124 does not suffer from...

If anyone has read Three Men In A Boat; you'll understand what I'm on about.

 

[television]

Just got a WIS and after an hours browsing I can only conclude that thats the only ailment my W124 does not suffer from...

If anyone has read Three Men In A Boat; you'll understand what I'm on about.

Do you mean there is not much for the 124 in WIS, sorry but I do not read books (fiction)


malcolm

 

[LNM]

No, far far too much....

I quote (not from the WIS, but it promotes exactly this type of feeling)

"It is a most extraordinary thing, but 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 most 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 ailment 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 sat for awhile, 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 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."

So he goes to see his doctor:

"I went to my medical man. 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 fancy I'm ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn 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 hundred of your ordinary, commonplace 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 is the matter with me. 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 opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it - a cowardly thing to do, I call it - and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.

I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's, 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 was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me."

I read the prescription. It ran:

"1 lb. beefsteak, with
1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand."

 

[Stircrazy]

What is a WIS?

I do read fiction sometimes and at the moment am reading "Breakfast of Champions" by Kurt Vonnegut. But even with this dubious literary connection I am baffled by this thread!

 

[television]

Thank you LMN. I am sure that your car is suffering from most covered in WIS, you have got to live with yourself knowing so much is wrong. when you have learnt it all by heart, things become easier

To Stircrazy
WIS is a computer program for MB cars.


Malcolm

 

[Blobcat]

Just got a WIS and after an hours browsing I can only conclude that thats the only ailment my W124 does not suffer from...

If anyone has read Three Men In A Boat; you'll understand what I'm on about.

In a similar vein I posted 'Are forums bad for your health' awhile ago and the overwhelming response was yes.

 

[turnipsock]

'Are forums bad for your health'

It's like Doc Morrissey in Reginald Perrin. No matter what was wrong with you, he had the same thing but didn't know what it was.

Doc Morrissey: Do you find you can't finish the crossword like you used to, nasty taste in the mouth in the mornings, can't stop thinking about sex, can't start doing anything about sex, wake up with a sweat in the mornings, keep falling asleep during '"Play For Today"?
Reginald Perrin: That's extraordinary, Doc! That's exactly how I've been feeling.
Doc Morrissey: So have I. I wonder what it is? Take two aspirins.

 

[Myros]

Kurt Vonnegut

my goodness, we're getting litererary of a morning. So it goes.

 

[LNM]

Ahhh, there are few things in life more enjoyable than watching the huge wave of confusion spread from some oblique comment.

Television

I thought WIS was a computer _game_ for Mercedes cars. And trucks. And vans.

Its going to take me a while to get to grips with it though, its not as easy as I'd thought it was going to be to use.

All

Pls note the prescription:

".. 1 pint of bitter beer every 6 hours"

Excellent.