Read the following dialogues. Learn them by heart.

1

    Receptionist: Doctor’s Office.

    Patient: Hello. This is Thomas Brown calling.

    Receptionist: What seems to be the problem?

Patient: I’ve got a running nose. I feel sick and giddy. And I’m off my food.

    Receptionist: How long have you had it?

    Patient: For two days.

    Receptionist: Would you like to make an appointment?

    Patient: Yes, please.

    Receptionist: Is 10 o’clock tomorrow morning convenient?

    Patient: Yes, that’s fine. Thank you very much.

2

Doctor: I’m concerned about your weight. You seem to be five kilos overweight.

Patient: My weight?

Doctor: Yes, I strongly advise you to change your diet.

Patient: Hmm. That won’t be easy.

Doctor: You see, it’s absolutely essential. You may develop a problem with your heart.

Patient: I see. Do you have any suggestions that might help?

Doctor: Yes, you should eat less food high in salt, and you might look for a cookery book that has low-fat recipes.

Patient: Thanks.

Doctor: Okay, here’s your prescription. ... be sure to follow the directions on the label. And one more thing … You might feel tired after taking this medication. Don’t worry. That’s a common side-effect.

Patient: Oh? I see. Well, thanks a lot.

HOW to LIVE to BE 2000

by Stephen Leacock

(Abridged)

Twenty years ago I knew a man called Jiggins, who had the Health Habit.

He used to take a cold plunge every morning. He said it opened his pores. After it he took a hot sponge. He said it closed his pores. He got so that he could open and shut his pores at will.

Jiggins used to stand and breathe at an open window for half an hour before dressing. He said it expanded his lungs. He might, of course, have had it done at a shoe store with a boot-stretcher, but after all it cost him nothing this way, and what is half an hour?

After he had got his undershirt on, Jiggins used to hitch himself up like a dog in harness and do exercises. He did them forwards, backwards, and hind-side up.

He could have got a job as a dog anywhere. He spent all his time at this kind of thing. In his spare time at the office, he used to lie on his stomach on the floor and see if he could lift himself up with his knuckles. If he could, then he tried some other way until he found one that he couldn’t do. Then he would spend the rest of his lunch hour on his stomach, perfectly happy.

 In the evenings, in his room he used to lift iron bars, cannon-balls, dumb-bells, and haul himself up to the ceiling with his teeth. You could hear the thumps half a mile.

 He liked it.

 He spent half the night slinging himself around his room. He said it made his brain clear. When he got his brain perfectly clear, he went to bed and slept. As soon as he woke, he began clearing again.

Jiggins is dead. He was, of course, a pioneer, but the fact that he dumb-belled himself to death at an early age does not prevent a whole generation of young men from following in his path.

They are ridden by the Health Mania.

They make themselves a nuisance.

They get up at impossible hours. They go out in silly suits and run Marathon heats before breakfast. They chase around barefoot to get the dew on their feet. They hunt for ozone. They won’t eat meat because it has too much nitrogen. They won’t eat fruit because it hasn’t any. They prefer albumen and starch and nitrogen to huckleberry-pie. They won’t drink water out of a tap. They won’t eat sardines out of a can. They won’t use oysters out of a pail. They won’t drink milk out of a glass. They are afraid of alcohol in any shape. Yes, sir, afraid. ‘Cowards’.

And after all their fuss they presently incur some simple old-fashioned illness and die like anybody else.

Now people of this sort have no chance to attain any great age. They are on the wrong track.

Listen. Do you want to live to be really old, to enjoy a grand, exuberant, boastful old age and make yourself a nuisance with your reminiscences?

 Then cut out all this nonsense. Cut it out. Get up in the morning at a sensible hour. The time to get up is when you have to, not before. If your office opens at eleven, get up at ten-thirty. 

Also, drop all that cold-bath business. You never did it when you were a boy. Don’t be a fool now. If you must take a bath (you don’t really need to), take it warm. The pleasure of getting out of a cold bed and creeping into a hot bath beats a cold plunge to death. In any case, stop gassing about your ‘shower’, as if you were the only man who ever washed.

So much for the point.

Now take the question of food.

Eat what you want. Eat lots of it. Yes, eat too much of it. Eat till you can stagger across the room with it up against a sofa cushion. Eat everything that you like until you can’t eat any more. The only test is, can you pay for it? If you can’t pay for it, don’t eat it. And listen – don’t worry as to whether your food contains starch, or albumen, or nitrogen. If you are a damn fool enough to want these things, go and buy them and eat all you want of them.

If you like nitrogen, go and get a canful of it at the soda counter and let you sip it with a straw. Only don’t think that you can mix all these things up with your food. There isn’t any nitrogen or phosphorus or albumen in ordinary things to eat. In any decent household all that sort of stuff is washed out in the kitchen sink before the food is put on the table.

And just one word about fresh air and exercise. Don’t bother with either of them. Get your room full of good air, then shut up the windows and keep it. It will keep for years. Anyway, don’t keep using your lungs all the time. Let them rest. As for exercise, if you have to take it, take it and put up with it. But as long as you can hire other people to play baseball for you and run races and do gymnastics when you sit in the shade and smoke and watch them – great heavens, what more do you want?  

Notes

1. to take a cold plunge - to cast oneself into cold water.

2. breathe (v) – to inhale and exhale. E.g. People, animals and plants breathe with oxygen. 

breath (n) – the act or power of breathing. E.g. He made a long and deep breath.

3. dumb-bell (v) – 1. to use a bar with weights at the end for exercise; 2. to make a fool of oneself (behave stupidly or ignorantly). 

4. gas about (v) sl -to overcome with admiration; to impress one’s hearers very favourably.

Proper Names

  Jiggins /'GIgInz/

1. Use a dictionary to find out what the following words mean.

    verbs                  nouns               adverbs

    sling                        plunge                   forwards

    incur                        harness                  backwards

    stagger                    albumen                 hind-side up

    hire                          starch