Free The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hašek Page A

was all beer and skittles, they were given ample doses of quinine in powder.
    3.  Rinsing of the stomach twice daily with a litre of warm water.
    4.  The use of the clyster with soapy water and glycerine.
    5.  Swathing in sheets soaked with cold water.
    There were dauntless persons who went through all five degrees of torment and had themselves removed in a simple coffin to the military cemetery. There were, however, others who were faint-hearted and who, when they reached the clyster stage, announced that they were quite well and that their only desire was to proceed to the trenches with the next draft.
    On reaching the military prison, Schweik was placed in the hut used as an infirmary which contained several of these fainthearted malingerers.
    "I can't stand it any longer," said his bed-neighbour, who had been brought in from the surgery where his stomach had been rinsed for the second time.
    This man was prevending to be shortsighted.
    "I'm going to join my regiment," decided the other malingerer on Schweik's left, who had just had a taste of the clyster, after pretending to be as deaf as a post.
    On the bed by the door a consumptive was dying, wrapped up in a sheet soaked in cold water.
    "That's the third this week," remarked Schweik's right-hand neighbour. "And what's wrong with you?"
    "I've got rheumatism," replied Schweik, whereupon there was hearty laughter from all those round about him. Even the dying consumptive, who was pretending to have tuberculosis, laughed.
    "It's no good coming here with rheumatism," said a stout man to Schweik in solemn tones, "rheumatism here stands about as much chance as corns. I'm anaemic, half my stomach's missing and I've lost five ribs, but nobody believes me. Why, we actually had a deaf and dumb man here, and every half hour they wrapped him up in sheets soaked in cold water, and every day they gave him a taste of the clyster and pumped his stomach out. Just when all the ambulance men thought he'd done the trick and would get
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    away with it, the doctor prescribed some medicine for him. That fairly doubled him up, and then he gave in. 'No,' he says, 'I can't go on with this deaf and dumb business, rny speech and hearing have been restored to me.' The sick chaps all told him not to do for himself like that, but he said no, he could hear and talk just like the others. And when the doctor came in the morning, he reported himself accordingly."
    "He kept it up long enough," remarked a man, who was pretending to have one leg a quarter of an inch shorter than the other, "not like the man who was shamming a paralytic stroke. Three quinines, one clyster and a day's fast was enough for him. He owned up, and before they got as far as pumping out his stomach there wasn't a trace of any stroke at all. The man who held out longest here was the one who had been bitten by a mad dog. He bit and howled, not half he didn't; he could manage that a fair treat, but he couldn't foam at the mouth. We helped him all we could. We used to keep on tickling him for a full hour before the doctor came till he got spasms and went blue in front of our very eyes, but there wasn't a trace of any foam. It just wasn't in him. Oh, it was something shocking. Well, when the doctor comes, up he stands by the bed straight as a dart and says : 'Beg to report, sir, that the dog that bit me don't seem to have been mad.' The doctor gives such a funny look at him that he begins to shake all over and goes on talking : 'Beg to report, sir, that I wasn't bitten by any dog at all. I bit my own hand, myself.' After he'd owned up to that, he was had up for biting his hand so as not to get sent to the front."
    "All diseases where you want to foam at the mouth," said the stout malingerer, "take a lot of shamming. Take epileptic fits, for instance. There was a chap here who had epileptic fits and he always used to tell us that one fit was nothing to him ; he could do ten of 'em a day, if necessary. He used to twist himself in spasms