Going Sick

July 1916

I began by having the shivers; I had then when I walked down corridors. I had them equally when I sat in the safe seclusion of the post office. I decided gloomily that they were certainly 'ushering in' something - were, in short, as the 'Home Nursing Manual' would express it, the 'invasion of the symptoms.' The only point was, the symptoms of what?
As soon as I got home I took my temperature with the instrument supplied to me at the Home Nursing Class. It comes down if the hand holding it is banged smartly against one's knee, and takes about a quarter of an hour to register. It cost me sevenpence. On this occasion it struggled up to 100.2. I announced this result to the family. Those who had not read the 'Manual' were suitable impressed; those who had, remarked that was only a slight fever. As a matter of fact, when it attained the altitude of 101 the 'Manual continued to maintain that it was still slight. Personally I did not feel that there was anything slight about it, and I wished the doctor summoned. The symptoms were now developing along the correct lines for influenza, but the 'Manual' suggested this cheerful thought: 'In its early stages the symptoms of smallpox are singularly like those of influenza - pains in the back and limbs, headache, etc.

The doctor said it was 'flu,' but as to when I should return to the post office he was less explicit. He suggested that I might require a medical certificate, and produced a book of little forms, one of which he tore out and filled up. I received this document with awe, never having had such a thing before. It made me feel what a very solemn thing it is to be in regular employment. The additional excitement of applying for Sickness Benefit under the Insurance Act was denied me, as after much controversy and a voluminous correspondence, I had obtained exemption. In this I scored greatly over a young friend whom we will call Clarence. Long before the Act was though of he claimed and obtained a lodger's vote on the ground that he paid his father 10s. a week for his room - this 10s., as a matter of fact, his obliging parent promptly returned. Upon the passing of the Act Clarence claimed exemption on the ground that he was dependent upon his father for his board and lodging. The Insurance Commissioners asked various personal questions, and retorted curtly, 'Amount of earnings incompatible with a state of dependence,' which was a polite way of saying that if Clarence was not self-supporting - well, he ought to be. What was even more incompatible were the two statements of Clarence, since one cannot be both a lodger and dependent for lodging. Hence it followed that he dared no longer vote, neither did he escape insurance. I, who have no vote, felt no regrets at so well-deserved disenfranchisement.

Clarence, by the way, once told me the following little story:
One evening he dined in town with a friend, who at the conclusion of the repast suggested that they should repair to a music hall. Clarence demurred, saying that it was now too late; but the friend, who we will call Tompkins, offered to be that they would obtain good seats at any music hall of repute, and they repaired to the Valhalla.
"Seats telephoned for in the name of Smith - advance booking," Tompkins announced to the attendant, and three minutes later they were seated in the stalls.
"It is quite a safe dodge," Tompkins remarked complacently, when he had paid. "You will always find some Smith has 'phoned for seats at any decent-sized house."
"But," gasped the astounded Clarence, "have you never encountered the real Smiths?"
"The real Smiths - what are they? A voice crying on the telephone! Once I was told they had arrived ten minutes before. I said 'But you had no business to give them my seats.'"

However, this story, though it may perhaps furnish an inspiring example of cool courage, has nothing to do with my illness, the outstanding feature of which continued to be a deplorable lack of harmony between it and the Manual - I felt so much worse than the latter said I was. I tumbled and tossed, tried on the left side, on the right side, on my back; had a lot of pillows, had no pillows; accumulated bed-clothes and bottles, and then threw them away again. I did not want to read, nor to write (even for the Gazette), nor to sew anything; neither was I in the least sleepy. I remembered that a night nurse had once told me how men would ask her the time, and how sorry she was to have to tell them it was perhaps only eleven, when she knew how wearily the hours were dragging by to them.
"Heavens," I thought, "if I make all this fuss, and am bored nearly stiff, by a potty little illness like this, what should I do if I were like some of the men in the Pat.!" And I remembered how Florence Nightingale had spoken of that 'long and silent fortitude,' that 'unalterable patience, simplicity, and good strength - the voiceless strength to suffer and be still,' which are as wonderful in our own wounded today as they were in those who filled her monstrous hospital with its four miles of beds.

My convalescence was thrilled by the excitement of the revolt in Ireland, an excitement which took on a personal tinge when we heard that a member of the family had had the misfortune to stop a rebel bullet with his face. We discussed in hushed tones whether the injury to his physiognomy was likely to be of a nature to necessitate his removal to the 3rd, and the ministrations of Derwent Wood. However, we learned shortly that he had had the proverbial miraculous escape, the bullet passing in under his ear and being dug out of his cheek. The injury resulting appeared to be best summed up in the victim's own remark "Hell to eat!" We also discussed whether he would have a special medal for the Irish campaign, or merely a Battle of Dublin bar added to the Great War medal.

At last I was on my feet again, and the date of my return to work fixed. "Now," I said, "we will collect all my medicine bottles, and take them round to Mr. Wood's bottle depot in Barmouth Road, and in due course the donkey transport will fetch them from there and convey them to the hospital."
"But why cannot you take them straight to the hospital yourself?" the family argued.
"No," I said, firmly. "In the Army everything is done decently and in order, and goes through a series of properly marked-out departments. It is now my duty to uphold these glorious traditions, and I will do my bit by sending the bottles via Mr. Wood and donkey transport."

H. M. NIGHTINGALE