HYPOCHONDRIACS.
Hypochondriacs are to be met at the celebrated baths, of course; for wherever there are disordered bodies there are disordered minds. No human creature is so ill as he or she who imagines an illness, since the subtlest art of healing cannot reach the shadows of emptiness. I remember an Englishman at Homburg, one of the most robust of fellows, who, after quitting college, had begun reading medical works only to convince himself that he had some deep-seated disease. His belief stimulated his appetite for information. He pored over all the pathological treatises he could find, and every week fancied that he had some new ailment. He travelled everywhere, swallowed entire drug stores, visited every watering-place in civilization. He had been nearly twenty years in pursuit of the health he had never lost, when I made his acquaintance at the Quatre Saisons. Happening to touch on the subject of hygiene, I set him off upon countless theories, and upon the bitterest denunciation of physicians. He informed me confidentially that he had a serpent in his stomach, and that he felt it every day gnawing his vitals. He felt sure that he had swallowed it in an embryo state, years before, in India, and that he would never be well until the reptile was by some means expelled. He was a man of ruddy complexion, and of nearly two hundred pounds avoirdupois, which induced me to tell him that serpents must agree with him, and that, if he could swallow four or five more, he would live a thousand years. He assured me he could not be mistaken, and that he had hope that the water of a certain spring would insure his recovery. After tasting of that particular spring, I expressed my conviction that no well-regulated snake would endure being deluged by such an obnoxious liquid day after day, and that his frequent draughts, without any result, proved conclusively that the reptile was in his mind, and not in his stomach. This style of bantering seemed to please him, and when I made it clear to him that I was not a professional physician, he was willing to follow my advice. I urged him to give up doctors and medicines of every sort; to take a great deal of exercise, and to cease thinking of himself as a valetudinarian. He promised to follow my prescription for six months, and the ensuing winter I met him again in Naples, a radically changed man. He had cleared his brain of all its cobwebs, and thanked me heartily for the sagacious course I had recommended. “I am delighted to know,” he added, “that you are not a physician, for if you were, you couldn’t help being a fool.”
STOUT WOMEN.
The stout women on the shady side of life who visit the springs under the impression that they are ailing are extremely amusing. They must know they are shams; but they imagine that it is genteel and attractive to be delicate; and so, notwithstanding their excellent appetite and liberal proportions, they insist they are going into decline, when their chief danger is from apoplexy. They will entertain you by the hour with their lack of appetite, their loss of sleep, and their extreme fragility. You may credit their story unless you happen to see them at dinner, or hear them sleeping audibly on the sofa soon after, or find them performing social duties which would tire out Samson.
L.
GAMING AND GAMESTERS ABROAD.
FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC SUMMER RESORTS.—THE ADVANTAGE OF THE FORMER.—MYSTERIOUS CHARACTERS.—A TRIO OF CELEBRATED GAMESTERS.—THEIR EXTRAORDINARY HISTORY.—TRAGIC FATE OF A YOUNG RUSSIAN OFFICER.—TEMPTATION, DESPAIR, AND SUICIDE OF A BEAUTIFUL ENGLISH GIRL.—A LUCKY BANKER’S CLERK.—A HUNGARIAN HANGING HIMSELF FOR A WARNING.—ECCENTRICITIES OF CROUPIERS.—A CALM-BLOODED HOLLANDER.—THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET.—ROSE-STREWN ROADS TO RUIN.