Our old friend and family physician, who had come to Hosterwitz in September to visit me, wished to have me near him, and in those days there was probably no one who deserved more confidence; for Heinrich Moritz Romberg was considered the most distinguished pathologist in nervous diseases in Germany, and his works on his own specialty are still valued.
In what a condition I entered the home which I had left so strong and full of youthful vigour! And Berlin did not receive me kindly; for the first months I spent there brought days of suffering with fever in the afternoon, and nights whose condition was no less torturing than pain.
But our physician had been present at my birth, he was my godfather, and as kind as if I were his son.

He did everything in his power to relieve me, but the remedies he used were not much easier to bear than many a torturing disease.

And hardest of all, I was ordered to keep perfectly still in bed.

What a prospect! But when I had once resolved to follow the doctor's advice, I controlled with the utmost care every movement of my body.

I, who had so often wished to fly, lay like my own corpse.