Strona:Jerome K. Jerome - Trzej ludzie w jednej łodzi.djvu/22

 I followed the directions, with the happy result — speaking for myself — that my life was preserved, and is still going on.
 In the present instance, going back to the liver-pill circular, I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being „a general disinclination to work of any kind.“
 What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.
 „Why, you skulking little devil, you“, they would say, „get up and do something for your living, can‘t you?“ — not knowing, of course, that I was ill.
 And they didn‘t give me pills; they gave me clumps on the side of the head. And, strange as it may appear, those clumps on the head often cured me — for the time being. I have known one clump on the head have more effect upon my liver, and make me feel more anxious to go straight away then and there, and do what was wanted to be done, without further loss of time, than a whole box of pills does now.
 You know, it often is so — those simple, old fashioned remedies are sometimes more efficacious than all the dispensary stuff.
 We sat there for half-an-hour, describing to each other our maladies. I explained to