He was never without a cold, except once for nine weeks while he had scarlet fever; and he always had chilblains.

During the great cholera scare of 1871, our neighbourhood was singularly free from it.

There was only one reputed case in the whole parish: that case was young Stivvings.
He had to stop in bed when he was ill, and eat chicken and custards and hot-house grapes; and he would lie there and sob, because they wouldn't let him do Latin exercises, and took his German grammar away from him.
And we other boys, who would have sacrificed ten terms of our school-life for the sake of being ill for a day, and had no desire whatever to give our parents any excuse for being stuck-up about us, couldn't catch so much as a stiff neck.

We fooled about in draughts, and it did us good, and freshened us up; and we took things to make us sick, and they made us fat, and gave us an appetite.

Nothing we could think of seemed to make us ill until the holidays began.