In Sterne’s introductory note, the _Journal_ is described as “a Diary of the miserable feelings of a person separated from a Lady for whose Society he languish’d.” Already worn out by a long stretch of dinners, Sterne completely broke down under the strain of Mrs. Draper’s departure for India. “Poor sick-headed, sick-hearted Yorick!” he exclaims, “Eliza has made a shadow of thee.” As his illness increased, the Sunday visits in Gerrard Street were broken-off, and the sick and dejected lover shut himself up in his lodgings to abstinence and reflection. To allay the “fever of the heart” with which he was wasting, he had recourse to Dr. James’s Powder, a popular remedy of the period which, so said the advertisement, would cure “any acute fever in a few hours, though attended with convulsions.” On going out too soon after taking the nostrum, Sterne caught cold and came near dying. Physicians were called in, and twelve ounces of blood were taken from the patient in order “to quiet,” says Sterne, “what was left in me.” The next day the bandage on his arm broke loose and he “half bled to death” before he was aware of it. Four days later he found himself much “improved in body and mind.” On feeling his pulse, the doctors “stroked their beards and look’d ten per c^t. wiser.” The patient was now in condition for their last prescription: I “am still,” he writes, “to run thro’ a Course of Van Sweeten’s corrosive Mercury, or rather Van Sweeten’s Course of Mercury is to run thro’ me.” The doctors dismissed, Sterne finally experimented at his own risk with a French tincture called _L’Extrait de Saturne_, and on the next day he was able to dine out once more. During his illness his “room was always full of friendly Visitors,” and the “rapper eternally going with Cards and enquiries.” With these friends, among whom were Lord and Lady Spencer, he had yet to dine; and then on the twenty second of May he set out for Yorkshire. On the twenty eighth he reached his “thatched cottage” at Coxwold, and began another course of corrosive Mercury. His “face as pale and clear as a Lady after her Lying in,” he rose from his bed to take the air every day in his postchaise drawn by “two fine horses,” and by the middle of June he was “well and alert.” So he went over to Hall-Stevenson’s at Crazy Castle, where on the neighboring beach, “as even as a mirrour of 5 miles in Length,” squire and parson ran daily races in their chaises, “with one wheel in the Sea, & the other in the Sand.” In the course of the summer, Sterne paid another visit to Crazy Castle; Hall-Stevenson came to Coxwold for a day or two, and they went together to Harrogate to drink the waters. By the 27th of July they were back at York for the races. At the beginning of the next month, Sterne was “hurried backwards and forwards ab^t. the arrival of Madame”—an event that had long been impending to the suspense and torture of his mind.