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    The Man Who Was A Hospital

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    Anu Lekshmi
    The short story "The Man Who was a Hospital" by Jerome K. Jerome is about a man who becomes convinced he has every disease listed in medical books after reading about symptoms. He visits his doctor hoping to be useful for his medical experience, but the doctor finds no real ailments and prescribes only lifestyle changes. The story satirizes how people can develop hypochondria by trying to self-diagnose from limited medical knowledge without understanding.

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    The Man Who Was A Hospital

    Uploaded by

    Anu Lekshmi
    10K views2 pages
    The short story "The Man Who was a Hospital" by Jerome K. Jerome is about a man who becomes convinced he has every disease listed in medical books after reading about symptoms. He visits his doctor hoping to be useful for his medical experience, but the doctor finds no real ailments and prescribes only lifestyle changes. The story satirizes how people can develop hypochondria by trying to self-diagnose from limited medical knowledge without understanding.

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    The Man Who Was a Hospital

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    The short story "The Man Who was a Hospital" by Jerome K. Jerome is about a man who becomes convinced he has every disease listed in medical books after reading about symptoms. He visits his doctor hoping to be useful for his medical experience, but the doctor finds no real ailments and prescribes only lifestyle changes. The story satirizes how people can develop hypochondria by trying to self-diagnose from limited medical knowledge without understanding.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    10K views2 pages

    The Man Who Was A Hospital

    Uploaded by

    Anu Lekshmi
    The short story "The Man Who was a Hospital" by Jerome K. Jerome is about a man who becomes convinced he has every disease listed in medical books after reading about symptoms. He visits his doctor hoping to be useful for his medical experience, but the doctor finds no real ailments and prescribes only lifestyle changes. The story satirizes how people can develop hypochondria by trying to self-diagnose from limited medical knowledge without understanding.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
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    The Man Who was a Hospital

    Jerome K. Jerome is a famous English writer who has numerous works to his credit. His
    famous works include Three Men in a Boat, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and The
    Diary of a Pilgrimage. He used to write humorous articles in Victorian English magazines of
    his times. He has also written many plays and other books.

    “The Man Who was a Hospital “is a famous short story by Jerome K Jerome that explores the
    curious case of a man who fancies himself as suffering from all the diseases that could be
    possibly there in the world. He has a habit of reading symptoms of diseases and while reading
    about diseases he gets convinced that he possesses all those diseases. The story is remarkable
    for its humorous treatment of eccentric human behaviour.

    One day the protagonist of the story comes across a patent liver-pill circular and after reading
    the symptoms of liver diseases mentioned in it, he reaches the conclusion that his liver is out
    of order. He recalls another such episode from his life. One day he went to the British
    Museum to read about one his minor ailments. However, he was tempted to read about all the
    diseases mentioned in other pages under each English alphabet. He became frantic while
    reading the symptoms of diseases for he was convinced that he had all those diseases. The
    only disease, that he thought, he did not have was housemaid’s knee and he was a little
    disappointed over that as why that disease alone spared him. He had Bright’s disease as well,
    but only in moderate form and could live on with it for many years.

    The protagonist felt that he would be an interesting specimen to medical science. He was a
    walking hospital in himself. Medical practitioners could learn about all diseases by simply
    walking around him and studying his case. He would be an asset to the medical practitioners
    as they can make use of him in gaining medical experience which is the most significant
    thing that a medical practitioner should accumulate in his career. Hence, before going to the
    British Museum, he was a sound and healthy man. But he came out of the reading room as a
    man who was a hospital.

    The protagonist could not even feel his pulse at first. But when he managed to read his pulse
    at last, he could not feel his heart beating. He went to his doctor thinking that he would be a
    valuable asset to his doctor. The doctor examined the protagonist and asked him why he
    approached him as he did not have any visible symptoms of any disease. The protagonist
    explained what happened and the doctor gave him a prescription. The protagonist went to the
    chemist to procure medicine for his imaginary diseases. However, the chemist told him that
    he did not keep the things mentioned in the prescription in his shop and that such things are
    kept in cooperative stores and family hotel combined. Actually, the doctor had only
    prescribed a simple diet and some lifestyle suggestions for the protagonist since the
    protagonist had no diseases as such except what he imagined after reading medical books.
    The doctor’s prescription also contained the advice to not stuff his head with things that he
    could not understand.

    Jerome K. Jerome is here making fun of the eccentricities of human character and behaviour.
    Humans have the general tendency to reach at hasty conclusions after reading about things
    that could not understand fully. The protagonist in the story is one such a man. Jerome K.
    Jerome describes his mode of thinking and jumping from one conclusion to another after
    reading medical books in a hilarious manner.

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