Every blood test and every examination in the regular technical routine showed me to be perfectly normal; and yet, though I strained every nerve and muscle to justify these cheerful views, I was still conscious of the gradually tightening coils of some deadly venom. But the physicians still refused to take my complaints seriously; and for the life of me I couldn’t explain just how I felt. I simply knew that something had gone wrong, and that I was steadily losing ground in an unequal fight. About the only sensation I could describe was that I felt a constant whirling in my head; and the skin on my head and face felt like a tight-fitting leather mask. I ate nothing and slept very little, except under morphine. Whenever anyone spoke to me or looked at me I felt an impulse to burst out crying. I was assured, however, that all this was a perfectly natural result of the operation. About this time I developed an excruciating pain in my right hip, which admitted of no comfort, day or night; and when the orthopedic specialist had probed deep into the hip joint and drawn off whatever he could find--which wasn’t much--I discovered that this, also, was a natural consequence of the operation. I learned (indirectly) that I might perhaps have a stiff hip joint the remainder of my life, but they advised me it were better not to worry about it, seeing that it was not an uncommon result of a kidney operation. Unable to figure out what communication a lacerated kidney on the left side could have with a stiff hip on the opposite side, I asked the nurse; but for all I learned I might as well have asked the orderly. So I gave it up--as you have to do with all hospital problems that you attempt to solve by questioning those in attendance. To draw me off the subject my new nurse declared that my worst trouble was a bad case of the “grunts”; and when I reported this to Doctor Will, with the suggestion that he add it to my list of symptoms, he passed it over with the usual remark that it was “only natural.” Whatever I did, or said, or felt, or thought, seemed not to concern anyone, because it was always perfectly natural; indeed it seemed as if I were the most perfectly normal and natural patient in the whole institution. THE ATMOSPHERE OF DISSIMULATION