Summary of battling boats also it's optional notes
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J., George, and Harris are smoking together, comparing their relative ailments. Harris and George say they are often prone to fits of giddiness, and J. complains about his liver. J. tells the reader that whenever he reads a description of a disease (often found in advertisements for medicine) he feels certain that he suffers from it.
This is the first of many instances of the men complaining that working too hard has made them unwell. It’s obvious to the reader that they’re actually healthy young men, however, who are being hypochondriacs. Affecting illness allows the men to make more of a case for their leisure time and facilitates the idea of going on a river trip to restore their well-being.
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Continuing on with his medical complaints, J. relates an experience at the British Museum. In this anecdote, he visits to read up on his sickness (the rather harmless hay fever). On flicking through an encyclopedia of diseases, he feels he shows the symptoms of all of them except for “housemaid’s knee.” He could be of great use to the medical profession, he feels, as a resource for students to encounter a wide range of problems.
J. would be a remarkable case indeed if he had every disease in the encyclopedia, but he doesn’t. In fact, it’s clear that he knows he’s exaggerating—he’s not being naïve or paranoid about being ill but is affecting that pose because that’s what he and his friends do to justify their leisure time (and to allay accusations of laziness). Telling the reader he didn’t have “housemaid’s knee” is a kind of joke, suggesting he knows he isn’t really sick.