It is getting into winter and the season of colds. My family and I have been coughing for weeks, unable to finally get rid of a persistent cold. But things are not as bad as they might be.
In the 19th century, a writer called Charles Lamb wrote a letter to a friend to complain about a cold he was suffering. His cold was so bad that he described it not as a nightmare, but as a “day-mare.” Here is what he had to say in his letter, which I have edited to make simpler.
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Dear friend,
Do you know what it is to suffer a day-mare? It is a lack of desire to do anything or to be anything. It is a total deadness and distaste. It is a suspension of vitality. It is an indifference to where I am. It is a numb, good-for-nothing feeling. It is a feeling of my body hardening all over. It is an oyster-like insensibility to what is happening around me.
Did you ever have a very bad cold? This has been for many weeks my fate and my excuse. My fingers drag heavily over this paper, and to my thinking it is three miles from here to the end of this page. I have not a thing to say. I am flatter than a pancake. I am duller than a theatre stage when the actors are off it. I acknowledge life at all only by an occasional cough and a permanent pain in the chest. I am weary of the world; life is weary of me. My day is gone into twilight, and I don't think it worth the expense of candles. I can't distinguish veal from mutton; nothing interests me. If you told me the world will be at an end tomorrow, I should just say, "Will it?"
My brains are gone out to see a poor relative, and they did not say when they'd come back again. My skull is a cheap attic to let, without a stool left in it. My hand writes, not I, from habit, as chickens run about a little when their heads are off. Oh, if only I could have a toothache, an insect in my ear, a fly in my eye instead!
Did you ever have an obstinate cold, a six or seven weeks' unintermitting chill and suspension of hope, fear, conscience and everything?
Charles Lamb
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