they are not, to try if he would like them better; and because he
did not choose to believe in a water-baby when he saw it, she made
him believe in worse things than water-babies--in unicorns, fire-
drakes, manticoras, basilisks, amphisbaenas, griffins, phoenixes,
rocs, orcs, dog-headed men, three-headed dogs, three-bodied
geryons, and other pleasant creatures, which folks think never
existed yet, and which folks hope never will exist, though they
know nothing about the matter, and never will; and these creatures
so upset, terrified, flustered, aggravated, confused, astounded,
horrified, and totally flabbergasted the poor professor that the
doctors said that he was out of his wits for three months; and
perhaps they were right, as they are now and then.

So all the doctors in the county were called in to make a report on
his case; and of course every one of them flatly contradicted the
other: else what use is there in being men of science? But at
last the majority agreed on a report in the true medical language,
one half bad Latin, the other half worse Greek, and the rest what
might have been English, if they had only learnt to write it. And
this is the beginning thereof -


"The subanhypaposupernal anastomoses of peritomic diacellurite in
the encephalo digital region of the distinguished individual of
whose symptomatic phoenomena we had the melancholy honour
(subsequently to a preliminary diagnostic inspection) of making an
inspectorial diagnosis, presenting the interexclusively
quadrilateral and antinomian diathesis known as Bumpsterhausen's
blue follicles, we proceeded" -