How to handle someone taking the cure

"Only yesterday that Admiral Sir Rigby-Rudd toppled over in my presence after doing his bending and stretching exercises and said he felt faint and he was afraid it was his heart and would I go and get him a drop of brandy. Anything like the way he carried on when I just poured a bucketful of cold water down his back instead, you never heard in your life." (from Money For Nothing, by Sir P. G. Wodehouse)