THE PNEUMOGASTRIC NERVE.

UPON an average, twice a week,

When anguish clouds my brow,

My good physician friend I seek

To know “what ails me now.”

He taps me on the back and chest,

And scans my tongue for bile,

And lays an ear against my breast

And listens there awhile;

Then is he ready to admit

That all he can observe

Is something wrong inside, to wit:

My pneumogastric nerve!

Now, when these Latin names within

Dyspeptic hulks like mine

Go wrong, a fellow should begin

To draw what's called the line.

It seems, however, that this same,

Which in my hulk abounds,

Is not, despite its awful name,

So fatal as it sounds;

Yet of all torments known to me,

I'll say without reserve,

There is no torment like to thee,

Thou pneumogastric nerve!

This subtle, envious nerve appears

To be a patient foe,—

It waited nearly forty years

Its chance to lay me low;

Then, like some blithering blast of hell,

It struck this guileless bard,

And in that evil hour I fell

Prodigious far and hard.

Alas! what things I dearly love —

Pies, puddings, and preserves —

Are sure to rouse the vengeance of

All pneumogastric nerves!

Oh that I could remodel man!

I'd end these cruel pains

By hitting on a different plan

From that which now obtains.

The stomach, greatly amplified,

Anon should occupy

The all of that domain inside

Where heart and lungs now lie.

But, first of all, I should depose

That diabolic curve

And author of my thousand woes,

The pneumogastric nerve!