In the first chapter, J. went to the British Library to read up on a medical condition. After consulting a medical encyclopedia, he discovered that...

With this opening story, narrator J. reveals three of his most prominent attributes: his gullibility, his inclination toward exaggeration, and his ability to tell tales. He was consulting the medical book about one disease, and he got distracted by the descriptions of the others. He kept imagining that he had variations of many of the symptoms of the maladies listed in the reference book. He paged through them in alphabetical order, from “ague” to “zymosis.” In the end, he tells us that the only one he didn’t seem to have was “housemaid’s knee.” And why would he? He was an English gentleman who lived in a boarding house. He didn’t have to get down on his hands and knees to wash any floors on a regular basis. This is a humorous story that sets the stage for many more to come.