The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide To Eccentric & Discredited Diseases Read online

  The ensuing investigation revealed that the clinical team had been tragically unaware that Mrs. Fripp was afflicted not only with Logopetria, but also with a severe speech dysfluency, or stutter. The testing situation undoubtedly exacerbated this dysfluency, until at last the mounting pressure behind her attempts at vocalization resulted in a forceful explosion of artifact fragments that sprayed across the room like shrapnel.

  Subsequent research using PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans reveals that language processing in Logopetria sufferers occurs quite normally in the dominant hemisphere of the brain, although there is a great deal of anomalous activity in the areas of the sylvian fissure closest to the visual cortex. The means by which verbal impulses are reified as physical objects is as yet dimly understood, although it almost certainly involves a dysfunction of the parotid and sublingual salivary glands.

  Dr. Sylvia Herringbone, however, has consistently rejected any physiological explanation for Logopetria, arguing instead that the individuals so diagnosed are in fact hoaxsters, individuals able to regurgitate previously-swallowed objects during their “performances.” In response, I simply cite Dr. Harpsichord: “[Dr. Herringbone’s] stubborn reluctance to grasp the physiological nature of [Logopetria] is hardly surprising, given her equally stubborn failure to accept the dysfunction of certain aspects of the male anatomy as quite common and perfectly natural.” (Journals, IV, 224)

  In all documented cases, the disorder manifests from birth, and those suffering from Logopetria often devise compensatory strategies to disguise their affliction. (4)

  History

  Modern occurrences of Logopetria remain quite rare, although more than 20 cases have been identified around the world since 1971. For reasons that are not yet clear, most of those afflicted are artists, writers, and musicians, many of whom are quite entranced with their condition and reluctant to have it “cured.” (5)

  Cures

  Our understanding of the physiological basis of Logopetria is still in its infancy, complicating efforts to outline an effective course of treatment. Attention has instead been focused on creating strategies to compensate for the limitations of the disorder. Of special note is the elaborate “word organ” devised by Oliver in 1983, and since widely adopted. The “word organ” consists of a series of tiered shelves upon which the patient’s linguistic artifacts are arranged according to an ingenious mnemonic system. This arrangement allows patients to converse more or less normally by playing upon the artifacts, much like a marimba, with a specially-designed pair of mallets.

  Submitted by

  J. TOPHAM, M.D.

  Endnotes

  (1) For a fascinating account of how this scholarly dispute ended in bloodshed, scandal, and disgrace, see Chapter 14 of Gunnar Sigmundsson’s The Beast Beneath the Robe: Extortion, Assassination, and Other Academic Intrigues (San Narciso University Press, 1989).

  (2) One cannot help but wonder if Hilary’s rather contemptuous appraisal stems from his profound antipathy toward America and Americans, a prejudice arising from a 1964 visit to New York City during which the British scientist was mistaken for pop musician Ringo Starr and chased for several blocks before fans realized their mistake.

  (3) Subsequent events would prove that Dr. Haast was not speaking hyperbolically. Haunted by the events of Black Thursday, he forsook medicine in 1985. Since that time, he has occupied himself entirely with a monumental (and as yet unpublished) epic poem commemorating the event.

  (4) Oliver, for example, was raised by his parents to believe himself mute, a misconception that was corrected one evening in a Chicago bowling alley when, in a moment of clumsiness, he dropped a 15-pound bowling ball onto the toes of his right foot. Possessed by a sudden and acute agony, Oliver undertook his first attempt at vocalization. Instead of the intended expletive, however, he was astounded to observe a grapefruit-sized ball of mottled, mossy green pop from his mouth and roll down the lane, where it made short work of the 7–10 split that had been plaguing him all evening.

  (5) Logopetria is probably the only known disease whose byproducts are as avidly sought after by art museum curators as they are by collectors of medical curiosities. The two finest collections of linguistic artifacts are currently housed at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Ronald Reagan Museum of Medical Anomalies.

  Cross References

  Diseasemaker’s Croup; Figurative Synesthesia

  LOGROLLING EPHESUS

  Country of Origin

  Brutish Aisles, Howth Castle and Environs

  First Known Case

  Owing to the pursuivant difficulty of making a firm dieresis, there is more than one contango for this role. Dr. Daphne Longfort augurs that the Logorrheic Aphids syndrome is runcible for the case of patient E. Lear (1812–1888), who very pobble contracted it in 1845 from contaminated jobiskas. However, no other patient has exhibited Lear’s additional symptom of bioluminescent penile growth (see The Guide to Psycho-tropic Balkan Disuse ed. Geraldine Carter, M.D., section heading “The Dong with a Luminous Nose”). Less contrapuntally, it is clear that patient J. Juice (1882–1941) discalced some symptoms as ulysses as 1922 and riverrun badly downhill by a commodius vicus of recirculation to his pubication of an exagmination round his factification for incamination of 1939. Dr. Dove Lingfart concurs. A celerity case of some note was J. Lemon (1940–1980), diamagnetized in his own write with a spaniard in the works and suspected faulty bagnose.

  Symplegades

  Though easily confessed with deliquium or glossary, Loquacious Apeiron is rudderly identifiable by the nature of its effete upon the linguini centres of the cerberus. Topically, accordion to Dr. Diva Lengfist, patience feel virtually no discobolus aside from the natural frustum of impeached communism. The Trimble-Manard Omnivore of Insidious Arctic Melodies reports some unconferred observations by Dr. L. Carroll of accompanying reeling, writhing, and fainting in coils.

  Curettes

  Medial sinecure, clams Dr. Devious Lungfroth, carrot yet offer more than palladian tenement for vicars of Loggerhead Ophelia. Most sexagesimal is the old-fascined remora of isotoping the sophomore and alluring the infarction to rune its corset. In suspiringly money caissons, an dark and nowhere starlights. The madrigore of verjuice must be talthibianized. Opopanax thunder dismemberment baize hellebore obelus cartilage maize. Gra netiglluk ende firseiglie blears. Obah Cypt. Till thousendsthee. Lps. Loggermist crotehaven jail. Loogermisk moteslaven dool until abruptly the crisis passes and normal grasp of language returns with startling rapidity. Whether or not this is only a temporary remission in any given case of Logomachic Aphasia must remain honorificabilitudinitatibus.

  Submitted by

  DR. DAVID LANGFORD

  Cross Rafters

  Bastard’s Mural; Diseasemocker’s Crepe

  MENARD’S DISEASE

  Biblioartifexism

  History

  Menard’s Disease, or Biblioartifexism, subjects its sufferers to the wholesale delusion that they have written—recomposed word for word and line by line, albeit in a fresh context—a classic literary work by a well-known writer.

  This rare ailment takes its name from the French symbolist poet and belletrist Pierre Menard. According to his friend Jorge Luis Borges, Menard produced “perhaps the most significant writing of our time” when he duplicated the ninth and thirty-eighth chapters of Part I of Don Quixote and a fragment of Chapter XXII in Bayonne, France, between 1918 and 1939. Although no one but Borges could distinguish these pages from their counterparts in Miguel de Cervantes’ masterpiece, Menard held that reconstructing a novel that came spontaneously to Cervantes demanded more labor and greater subtlety than did its original composition. It also required the total suppression of his own personality—his private tastes, aesthetics, and metaphysics. Indeed, this symptom—a complete lack of existential affect—typifies all final-stage Menardians, rendering them, paradoxically, at once megalomaniacal and bland.

  Symptoms

  Without exception, sufferers of Men
ard’s Disease present to the public a tangible artifact—an actual copy—of a well-known literary work as their own accomplishment. They offer this work, whether Cervantes’ Don Quixote, or “The Nine Billion Names of God” by Arthur C. Clarke, or Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, as if they had written it by excruciating protocols of self-denial and reenvisionment. These protocols, they usually aver, have alchemized the popular original into its consummate hypostatic text, mysteriously transforming it.

  Many clinicians initially mistake Menard’s Disease (not to be confused with Menière’s Disease, a disorder of the inner ear) for plagiarism, which it resembles no more than a hangman resembles a hangnail. Others may misidentify the visible symptom of the disease—the literary artifact that the sufferer produces, much as a sufferer from gout produces kidney stones—as a parody. Typically, these two misdiagnoses further madden the patient. Caring physicians must scrupulously guard against them.

  Additional Cases

  Besides the eponymous Pierre Menard, other sufferers of Menard’s Disease have included Carter Scholz and Robert James Waller. Scholz’s personal case history, “The Nine Billion Names of God,” recounts his devastating extended bout with the disease, but, remarkably, does not reduplicate the famous Arthur C. Clarke story on which he fixated. (Scholz has since more or less recovered.) Waller, however, does reproduce, in all its fatiguing banality, the text of a best seller, The Bridges of Madison County, which he himself wrote in a state of self-possessed delirium. (Admittedly, the Waller example stalks the borderline of psychiatric orthodoxy, but Menard’s Disease also tiptoes that ill-defined pale.)

  Another unconventional sufferer was Norman Spinrad, who channeled the toxic anima of none other than Adolf Hitler to recompose a lost science fiction novel of the unlamented führer, Lord of the Swastika. The flamboyant Spinrad’s psychosis had progressed even farther than Menard’s, however, and its virulence led him to the self-aggrandizing chutzpah of calling Hitler’s novel The Iron Dream and publishing it under his own name—with two title pages. Like Scholz, Spinrad has since benefited from remission, although his disease periodically erupts in otherwise inexplicable forays into the electoral politics of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFFWA), a dysfunctional literary organization.

  Cures

  Usually, untreated, Menard’s Disease leads to greater delusions of genius and/or popular acclaim. (The sufferer, one might say, becomes insufferable.) So rarely does this orphan disease occur, however, that major pharmaceutical houses fund no research to produce ameliorative drugs. Therefore, treatment includes subjecting patients to public humiliation. Outdoor readings of their allegedly transfigured texts and barrages of rotten vegetables often restore equilibrium after three or fewer applications. Sadly, this very treatment may reinforce the delusion of surpassing genius. For this reason, death proves the longest-lasting efficacious therapy. One caveat: Legal proscriptions and penalties generally counterindicate murder.

  Although it has yet to assume epidemic proportions, Biblioartifexism strikes a few more authors every year. Of course, plagiarists and parodists have long abounded. Some romance writers—usually, the only female sufferers of the syndrome—have imported colleagues’ words into their own texts with no clear improvement to their own work or damage to their sources. But Menardians prefer grander substitutions, and specialists predict wider outbreaks as literacy shrivels and celebrity fever soars. In any event, health-conscious citizens must beware of future “reenvisioned” editions of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and possibly even David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day.

  Submitted by

  MICHAEL BISHOP, M.D., AUTHOR OF A NEW EDITION OF The Journals of Sarah Goodman, DISEASE PSYCHOLOGIST

  Cross References

  Bloodflower’s Melancholia; Diseasemaker’s Croup; Printer’s Evil; Rashid’s Syndrome

  MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM INFESTATION

  Flaming Ring, Night Torch

  Country of Origin

  Outer Mongolia, also Inner Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Siberia, and select portions of New Jersey

  First Known Case

  Although long known to the nomads of the steppes (see History), the first documented modern case was a Dr. La Guerre-Joffre of the Anglo-French Mongolian Expedition of 1902. He succumbed in situ at the age of 42. His body was promptly incinerated in self-defense by the other members of the expedition. A poorly-edited account of Dr. La Guerre-Joffre’s death appeared in the infamous, now-banned Prague edition of Doctor Buckhead Mudthumper’s Encyclopedia of Forgotten Oriental Diseases.

  Symptoms

  The adult Mongolian Death Worm is approximately two meters long, lying in wait below the sands before stunning its victims with a powerful electric shock, or according to some reports, spitting poison. However, the larval phase can be encountered as an intestinal parasite, typically from raw meat stored too close to the dung of Bactrian camels, or cured in the Mongolian fashion in horse sweat beneath the saddle. Symptoms vary across a wide spectrum, from mild fevers and ravings in Linear B to full-blown ignuus flatulii, or flaming farts, in which intestinal gasses are ignited by electrical discharges from the larval worms and present a significant danger to both the victim and his caregivers. The infestation is sometimes confused with Siberian Ice Fever or Urga Palsy.

  History

  Originating in prehistory, this disease was until recent times confined almost entirely to Mongol and Khazak nomads inhabiting the steppes of Central Asia. Mongolian Death Worm Infestation was first documented for Western eyes by the Englishman Father Johannes Gluteus of the Vatican Survey’s ill-fated mapping survey of 1277. Gluteus, who was eventually eaten by snow leopards, wrote of “. . . thee grette, foulle wyrmm whatt wrekes greveuse harm uponne thee coils of myne gutte.” The priest’s flame-scorched diary was recovered by Dr. La Guerre-Joffre’s Anglo-French expedition, in search of Genghis Khan’s tomb shortly after the Boxer Rebellion.

  Medical historians theorize that the Mongol invasions of Asia and Europe in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries may in fact have begun as a flight from a serious outbreak of Mongolian Death Worm in its larval vector.

  Cures

  Traditionally, Mongolian Death Worm is treated with a purgative consisting of a surfeit of khummus, or fermented mare’s milk, drunk in multi-gallon quantities so as to wash the larvae out. A tincture of venom from the adult Death Worm is also recommended by some shamanic sources, but fatalities from the venom collection process typically exceed the mortality rate from the disease itself. Modern allopathic treatments have included oven mitt compresses, airburst radiation therapy, and rapid anal administration of compressed CO2 in severe cases of ignuus flatulii. Unsubstantiated success has been reported with a homeopathic course of leech therapy.

  Submitted by

  DR. JAY LAKE, F.M.C.S. (FELLOW, MONGOLIAN COLLEGE OF SHAMANS)

  Cross References

  Diseasemaker’s Croup; Jumping Monkworm; Noumenal Fluke; Postal Carriers’ Brain Fluke

  MONOCHROMITIS9

  Country of Origin

  Specious. However, best speculations by the Roanoke (Alabama) Centers for Disease Control trace the disease to the early 1950s, exclusively in the deep and rural American South.

  In her Journals, Sarah Goodman refers to what may have been an early strain of the disease. Dr. Goodman reports that Afrikaner Jan Kruger sealed his Transvaalean hut, covered the walls with zebra hides, and papered his floor and ceiling with shredded copies of the Times. According to nearby Zulu tribes, Kruger eventually blinded himself. Goodman, however, was never able to substantiate the case.

  Symptoms

  Monochromitis is the stark raving abhorrence of color, often accompanied by an intense longing for the way things used to be.

  The disease begins innocently enough with a yearning for old movies; Birth of a Nation is a favorite, early Jolson, the decolorized version of Gone With the Wind (shown only after midnight and only on the United States cable channel
TNT), all viewed after 1:00 a.m., the lightning flicker of the TV transforming tiny dens into a chiaroscurist’s storm. Soon, the patient seals himself off from the world, plastering his walls, the doors, the windows with copies of The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, pages from early pulp magazines, prints by Ansel Adams, early Van Gogh, and Caravaggio. Drapery and bedding are often replaced with checkered racing flags. Not long after, diet is affected; eventually the patient subsists solely on Oreos dunked in whole milk, Ding-Dongs, and tubs of chocolate chip ice cream. In rarer cases, patients have spent life savings on grand pianos and closetfuls of tuxedos. They lounge for days on end in zebra-stripped pajamas playing dominoes and Pong; they find themselves mesmerized by the infuriating ambiguity of the mysterious 8-Ball. An overwhelming desire for nuns and priests is often recorded. (In pinches, referees will, apparently, do.) In one case, Ronald Druback, a 34-year-old male from Soso, Mississippi, achieved ordination into the Catholic priesthood through a series of Internet courses. (“The collar,” he told his attending physician. “That marvelous jacket.”) Rooms have been discovered filled to overflowing with stuffed menageries: litters of penguins and skunks and tiny orcas. In one of the most extreme cases, a Gerald Jitney of Hoboken, Georgia, purchased and married a Jersey cow.

  Cures

  None yet known. Dr. Dwayne Woolhider, the world’s leading Monochromologist, of the Roanoke CDC, reports that early studies led to a theory of opposition: namely, an intense overexposure to color. Patient Peter Joseph (“Peejoe”) Brumbleloe, well into the Priest and Referee phase, agreed to theoretical treatment. Dr. Woolhider filled Mr. Brumbleloe’s apartment with copies of USA Today and prints of Matisse and Picasso (his Blue period), with Skittles and Lifesavers, with macaws and toucans, with prisms and a 64-pack of Crayola crayons, a kaleidoscopic riot of color. The Rainbow Coalition agreed to make surprise visits. At the Twenty-Ninth Annual Symposium on Eccentric and Discredited Diseases, Dr. Woolhider reported that, when exposed to the prepared room, Mr. Brumbleloe’s head, unfortunately, exploded, blood as black as ichor splashing across the neon-bright walls, the tangled strings of Christmas lights. Oddly enough, the blood had the consistency, the texture, even the taste of India ink. Studies, Dr. Woolhider noted, returned to the blackboard.