'Tis healthy to be sick sometimes" (--Henry David Thoreau)

Go hang yourself, you old MD!

You shall not sneer at me.

Pick up your hat and stethoscope,

Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;

I contemplate a joy exquisite

I'm not paying you for your visit.

I did not call you to be told

My malady is a common cold.

By pounding brow and swollen lip;

By fever's hot and scaly grip;

By those two red redundant eyes

That weep like woeful April skies;

By racking snuffle, snort and sniff;

By handkerchief after handkerchief;

This cold you wave away as naught

Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!

Give ear, you scientific fossil!

Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;

The Cold of which researchers dream,

The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.

This honored system humbly holds

The Super-Cold to end all colds;

The Cold Crusading for Democracy;

The Fuhrer of the Streptococcracy.

Bacilli swarm within my portals

Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,

But bred by scientists wise and hoary

In some Olympic laboratory;

Bacteria as large as mice,

With feet of fire and heads of ice

Who never interrupt for slumber

Their stamping elephantine rumba.

A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!

Ah, yes.  And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;

Don Juan was a budding gallant,

And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;

The Arctic winter is fairly coolish, 

And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.

Oh what a derision history holds

For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds.

(--Ogden Nash)

Well, now you know where I've been....

"I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."  (-Fannie Lou Hamer)