That's my theory about cholera, and you
should make a note of it, Dr. Munro, sir, for I was
shipmates with fifty dead men when I was commanding the
armed transport Hegira in the Black Sea, and I know
---- well what I am talking about."
I fill in Whitehall's oaths with blanks because I
feel how hopeless it is to reproduce their energy and
variety. I was amazed when he stripped, for his whole
body was covered with a perfect panorama of tattooings,
with a big blue Venus right over his heart.
"You may knock," said he, when I began to percuss his
chest, "but I am ---- sure there's no one at home.
They've all gone visiting one another. Sir John Hutton
had a try some years ago. `Why, dammy, man, where's your
liver?' said he. `Seems to me that some one has stirred
you up with a porridge stick,' said he. `Nothing is in
its right place.' `Except my heart, Sir John,' said I.
`Aye, by ----, that will never lose its moorings while it
has a flap left.'"
Well, I examined him, and I found his own account not
very far from the truth. I went over him carefully from
head to foot, and there was not much left as Nature made
it. He had mitral regurgitation, cirrhosis of the
liver, Bright's disease, an enlarged spleen, and
incipient dropsy. I gave him a lecture about the
necessity of temperance, if not of total abstinence; but
I fear that my words made no impression. He chuckled,
and made a kind of clucking noise in his throat all the
time that I was speaking, but whether in assent or
remonstrance I cannot say.
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