"A cousin of mine, Mrs.Wilkins, had a wife who suffered occasionally from headache.

No medicine relieved her of them--not altogether.

And one day by chance she met a friend who said: 'Come straight with me to Dr.Blank,' who happened to be a specialist famous for having invented a new disease that nobody until the year before had ever heard of.

She accompanied her friend to Dr.Blank, and in less than ten minutes he had persuaded her that she had got this new disease, and got it badly; and that her only chance was to let him cut her open and have it out.

She was a tolerably healthy woman, with the exception of these occasional headaches, but from what that specialist said it was doubtful whether she would get home alive, unless she let him operate on her then and there, and her friend, who appeared delighted, urged her not to commit suicide, as it were, by missing her turn.
"The result was she consented, and afterwards went home in a four-wheeled cab, and put herself to bed.