The text of the Pickwick Paper of 12th June 1997 reads:

Pickwick felt comfortable sitting in the Porter's lodge at Corpus Christi College. He did not feel comfortable when he tried to stand. But he could not stay there much longer, even porters had to work sometimes!

His young companion Henry Bowd was cudgling his brains in an attempt to remember any old fen remedies which might cure his swollen ankle. He recalled how his grandmother would apply a Hot pancake to relieve lumbago or a pain in the back - and how as it was a sin to waste the food - they would eat it afterwards. Then horseradish could be grated, soaked in boiling water and used as a poultice. Or how about an eel-skin garter - only that took too long to prepare, once you'd caught and skinned the eels they still had to be greased with fat, put in linen bags and buried in the peat before they would work. And that only cured rheumatism, that might not work on a sprained ankle. Mind you some people swore that the application of urine - provided that it was the first of the day - would cure chilblains, perhaps that would do the job. Or he would lend Pickwick the mole's foot he always carried to ward off all sorts of ailment.

Somehow none of that appealed to Pickwick's sensibilities. Nor did he relish the other country cure- all for aches and pains, a liberal dose of opium which fenwomen would serve to their children as poppy tea, using the white poppies which grew in every country garden. Of course here in Cambridge you could buy it easily in any chemist's shop - and there were always the quack doctors on the market selling all sorts of bottles of highly coloured medicines which would cure everything. No, he would need to seek more orthodox remedies, but he could not do so until he had got back to his hotel, the Castle Inn, in St Andrew's street.

Then Fynn had a brainwave - Doctor Barnes' bathchair. Pickwick knew all about the ancient Master of Peterhouse, but not that in his latter years he had made his way about Cambridge in such a contrivance. Fynn squibbled a note to his opposite number at Peterhouse and despatched the lad to deliver it.

"You know", Fynn said, 'I was talking about the need for a bigger museum, but that's been a complicated story as well. You will have noticed all the building work going on just down Trumpington Street where they're building the new Fitzwilliam Museum. Well, some didn’t think that ought to be there. First of all the University Senate wanted to build it next to Kings college.

There was talk about it being put where the Bull Hotel now is, just across the road from Corpus. Then somebody had a plan to knock down the old buildings of Gonville and Caius college and build a replica of the Parthenon in Athens beside the Senate House. Some think that would have made a great improvement and Caius were keen to move - they would have come up beside Peterhouse - but old Pemberton wouldn’t surrender his lease on the ground - have you heard about the fuss he's causing them boat people. So then they had to think again"

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