Having only
a two years' standing, I was forced to bear the contempt which I
received from chronic cases, but I repaid it with interest on some
evidently shoddy invalids, who were trying to work their way into
society on an attack of only a few weeks duration. I remember one case,
however, in which our whole aristocratic circle was swept into
insignificance by a little lady, whom I saw after I left Hampton, and
who didn't weigh ninety pounds. She had been an invalid, she said, for
fifteen years, and while I do not recollect precisely her afflictions,
it appears to me that she had had chronic trichnia spiralis for that
length of time, with intermittent cerebro spinal meningitis tending
towards hydrophobia. This imposing patient cowed the whole invalid
circle. But one man showed the slightest resistance, and that was old
man Smith, who had been very proud of his chronic liver complaint. He
told me in confidence the next day that he believed "the whole story
was a ---- ----." It is due to the company, however, to say that the
narration was received with polite expressions of sympathy and wonder,
while there was at the same time a silent conviction that it was of
this complication of diseases that Ananias died.
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