Hesse describes a bleak picture: spa guests "with clumsy bones", lacking appetite, needing help, bored. He reports on "those shameful days", on "that Hessian who behaved so strangely in Baden". His sciatic nerve drives the writer to the health resort west of Zurich for three weeks. Gout is added to the new spa guest, the spa doctor states and immediately classifies the newcomer as a neurotic.