Curing himself of adhesions in the lungs by polevaulting and dropping himself on the rocks below

Some Sternean conversational wit, from a footnote in the first volume of the Florida Editions Letters (pg. 150)

Dr. Hill had reported that, at a dinner hosted by Charles Stanhope, Sterne had ridiculed a “pedantic medicine monger” (Monsey?), who was lecturing on the “difference between the phrenitis and the paraphrenitis,” by telling a cock-and-bull story about curing himself of adhesions in the lungs by polevaulting and dropping himself on the rocks below (see Cross, Letters 1:43-45)

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