Second doctor.  How are you feeling, gracious lord?

Jeppe.  Splendidly, except that I’m a little thirsty from the brandy I drank at Jacob Shoemaker’s yesterday.  If some one would only give me a mug of ale and let me go, why then they might hang you and all the rest of the doctors, for I need no medicine.

First doctor.  I call that pure hallucination, my good colleague!

Second doctor.  The more violent it is, the quicker it will spend its rage.  Let us feel your lordship’s pulse.  Quid tibi videtur, Domine Frater?

First doctor.  I think he should be bled immediately.

Second doctor.  I do not agree with you; such remarkable weakness must be treated otherwise.  My lord has had a strange and forbidding dream, which has caused a commotion in his blood and has set his brain in such a whirl that he imagines himself to be a peasant.  We must endeavor to divert his lordship with those things in which he usually takes the greatest pleasure.  Give him the wines and the dishes that he likes best, and play the music that it pleases him most to hear. (Cheerful music strikes up.)

Valet.  Is not this my lord’s favorite piece?

Jeppe.  Like enough.  Is there always such merrymaking here in the manor?

Valet.  Whenever his lordship pleases, for he gives us all our board and wages.

Jeppe.  But it is strange I can’t remember the things I have done before.

Second doctor.  It is the result of this illness, your lordship, that one forgets all he has done previous to it.  I remember, a few years ago, one of my neighbors became so confused after drinking heavily that for two days he thought he had no head.

Jeppe.  I wish Squire Christoffer would do that; he must have an illness that works just the other way, for he thinks he has a great big head, while he really hasn’t got one at all, as any one can tell from his decisions. (All laugh.)

Second doctor.  It is a great pleasure to us to hear his lordship jest.  But to return to my story, this fellow went all over the town asking people if they had found the head he had lost; he recovered, however, and is now a sexton in Jutland.

Jeppe.  He could be that even if he hadn’t found his head. (All laugh again.)

First doctor.  Does my honored colleague remember the case that occurred ten years ago, of the man who thought his head was full of flies?  He could not get over the notion, no matter how much they argued with him, until a clever doctor cured him in this way:  he put on his head a plaster which was covered with dead flies, and after a while took it off and showed the flies on it to the patient, who thought they had been drawn out of his head, and was immediately well again.