UPON an average, twice a week,
When anguish clouds my brow,
My good physician friend I seek
To know "what ails me now."
He taps me on the back and chest,
And scans my tongue for bile,
And lays an ear against my breast
And listens there awhile;
Then is he ready to admit
That all he can observe
Is something wrong inside, to wit:
My pneumogastric nerve!
Now, when these Latin names within
Dyspeptic hulks like mine
Go wrong, a fellow should begin
To draw what's called the line.
It seems, however, that this same,
Which in my hulk abounds,
Is not, despite its awful name,
So fatal as it sounds;
Yet of all torments known to me,
I'll say without reserve,
There is no torment like to thee,
Thou pneumogastric nerve!
This subtle, envious nerve appears
To be a patient foe,—
It waited nearly forty years
Its chance to lay me low;
Then, like some blithering blast of hell,
It struck this guileless bard,
And in that evil hour I fell
Prodigious far and hard.
Alas! what things I dearly love—
Pies, puddings, and preserves—
Are sure to rouse the vengeance of
All pneumogastric nerves!
Oh that I could remodel man!
I'd end these cruel pains
By hitting on a different plan
From that which now obtains.
The stomach, greatly amplified,
Anon should occupy
The all of that domain inside
Where heart and lungs now lie.
But, first of all, I should depose
That diabolic curve
And author of my thousand woes,
The pneumogastric nerve!