The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide To Eccentric & Discredited Diseases Page 4

  There are, however, those who dispute the existence of Bloodflower’s Melancholia in its hereditary form. Randolph Johnson is unequivocal on the subject. “There is no such thing as Bloodflower’s Melancholia,” he writes in Confessions of a Disease Fiend. “All cases subsequent to the original are in dispute, and even where records are complete, there is no conclusive proof of heredity. If anything we have here a case of inherited suggestibility. In my view, these cannot be regarded as cases of Bloodflower’s Melancholia, but more properly as Bloodflower’s Melancholia by Proxy.”

  If Johnson’s conclusions are correct, we must regard Peter Bloodflower as the sole true sufferer from this distressing condition, a lonely status that possesses its own melancholy aptness.

  Outcome and Cures

  This type of melancholia does not generally prove fatal. Peter Bloodflower, despite recurrent episodes, lived a long and fecund life. Only two cases of possible suicide in the Bloodflower family have occurred: that of Arthur Bloodflower, who died in 1892 of ink poisoning (his favored brand contained high quantities of vitriol) and that of Horatio Bloodflower, who according to legend drowned in his own tears.

  There is probably no cure for Bloodflower’s Melancholia, or, for that matter, for Bloodflower’s Melancholia by Proxy. Peter Bloodflower was, of course, subjected to the sole treatment available in his time: “I bled him six ounces,” writes Smith, “and found his blood to be as black as ink.” Freud found it non-amenable to psychoanalysis. “A grief whose sources lie in the very wellsprings of existence,” he wrote, “may never, I fear, be truly capable of cure.” Modern advances in genetics may yet hold the key to its eradication, or prove, at least, its claim to join the ranks of genuine hereditary diseases.

  Submitted by

  DR. TAMAR YELLIN

  Cross References

  Diseasemaker’s Croup; Menard’s Disease; Monochromitis; Poetic Lassitude; Rashid’s Syndrome

  BONE LEPROSY

  Turkish Bone Leprosy, or Saint Calamaro’s Leprosy

  Introduction

  Hansen’s disease, commonly known as leprosy, is a long-acting microbial infection. Its lengthy dormancy period has created confusion regarding its modes of transmission. However, the active organism, Mycobacterium leprae, has been isolated, and many modern cases can be reversed by antibiotics. In medieval Turkey, things were very different.

  History

  In the Christian year 1510, Bayezid the Second ruled the Ottoman Empire. On the shores of the Black Sea, at the mouth of the Sakarya River, there was a colony for lepers called Saint Augustine’s Retreat. The lepers grew barley and made goat cheese. Their needs for commerce with the outside world were met by an adjacent community, the Franciscan monks of The Order of Saint Augustine, who maintained the leprosarium.

  Throughout the existence of the colony, it attracted a steady stream of pilgrim lepers, who walked there from as far away as Greece and Persia. In roughly 1520 a new form of Hansen’s Disease appeared among the pilgrims. The Franciscans called it bone leprosy.

  Symptoms

  The basic distinction here is easy to grasp. The hallmark symptom of normal leprosy is that necrotic flesh falls from the bones of the extremities. In bone leprosy, the bones of the extremities fall from the flesh.

  First the blackened bones of the fingers and toes would poke themselves bloodlessly through the skin and detach. Next the metacarpals and metatarsals disassembled themselves and emigrated. At this stage the victim could still walk on his ankles with the help of crutches. But then the long bones of the four limbs would emerge into the light of day and discard themselves.

  The chronicle of Father Ambrosius, the last abbot of The Order of Saint Augustine, reports that one bone leper also lost his pelvis, scapulars, and clavicles, and got along with only a skull, a spine, and some ribs. This man called himself Vecchio Calamaro, “the old squid.” He may have been born in Italy.

  Further History

  By 1530 many bone lepers could be seen among the hovels of the colony, squirming across the earth like giant sea stars. But the “Normal Lepers” distrusted “the Boneless Ones” and finally attacked them with clubs and drove them from the colony.

  The Boneless Ones slithered away and formed their own settlement on a barren plateau that overlooked the monastery, the leprosarium, and the river. They drew water from a mountain stream and grew vegetables and spices. At the instruction of Father Ambrosius, the monks brought them barley and milk on the sly. An uneasy truce ensued between the two leper colonies.

  In 1534, during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, Old Calamaro experienced a religious epiphany. He communicated this vision to his fellow pariahs with such force that they reorganized themselves as a lay brotherhood. They committed their lives to penance, holy poverty, and the contemplation of Christ’s mercies. Calamaro went to live in a pit lined with stones, like a shallow well shaft or a lidless oubliette. He dug this pit himself, using only his teeth and a wooden spoon.

  As the years progressed, more and more of the Boneless took vows and became visionary hermits, living in the sunken circular cells that dotted the plateau. They seldom spoke, but their echoing chants at dawn and dusk could be heard by Father Ambrosius at Saint Augustine’s. Certainly the Boneless Ones had surpassed the Franciscans in their pursuit of austerity. Ambrosius felt no temptation to envy them their accomplishment. (1)

  The only existing record of The Order of Saint Augustine and the two leprosariums concludes with the death of Ambrosius. The monastery walls have been toppled by earthquakes.

  But Old Calamaro is remembered to this day as Saint Calamaro of the Russian Orthodox Church. A few of the “prayer pits” of his brotherhood have been preserved for visitation near the modern town of Karasu.

  Hagiography

  A hagiography is not, of course, medical data. I present this excerpt from Saint Calamaro’s notwithstanding, freely translated from an anonymous Latin parchment. Please consider it as a curious footnote to the social history of leprosy.

  The miracles of Saint Calamaro were three in number, and three in number were his trials, the first being a trial by hunger.

  It came to pass that the hearts of the Normal Lepers were enflamed against their bone-bereft neighbors. And the Normals didst resolve to accost those gentle Franciscans who went forth each day to pass among the Boneless. For the Normals deemed it folly to risk contagion from such an unnatural affliction as bonelessness. And they shouted at the monks, saying, “Shun the unclean! Your charity could get us all deboned!”

  And they didst smite those humble monks, and lo they broke many heads. For they grew cruel when they got a little wine into them. And Father Ambrosius didst resign himself to abandon the Boneless.

  And further the Normals didst rip up the Boneless One’s gardens and didst foul the pure water of their stream.

  For 40 days and nights, the Boneless drank only the morning dew that condensed on the walls of their cells, and ate only the tiny creeping things that they found within their clothes. And yet they thirsted not, nor didst they hunger. For the grace of Saint Calamaro’s first miracle was upon them.

  The second trial of the saint was a trial by drowning. For indeed the Normals didst arise again against him and didst drag him from his pit. And none of his followers resisted the Normals, but rather they prayed more loudly to drown out his cries for help. For the Boneless were sore afraid.

  And in consequence the Normals didst bind the saint within a sack, and drag the sack across sharp rocks to a boat, and row this boat a great distance across the Black Sea. And there they didst abuse the saint and kick him in his private parts and throw him overboard and leave him to drown. And the Normals were well satisfied, even though an ear, a nose, and several of their fingers had been lost in the scuffle.

  In his aquatic extremity, the saint lost not his faith in his Savior, but didst call out loudly to the Lord, with many Italianate profanities, in fear and in trembling and with evil-tasting water in his mouth. And his prayers wer
e answered, for like unto the rainbow-dappled jellyfish, he didst float upon the sea, nor did he sink.

  The Normals didst row to shore and make straight for their dining hall, for drowning cripples always made them thirsty. And lo the second miracle! At their dining hall, they found their cook in great dismay. For Saint Calamaro had appeared in her largest stew pot and was eating all the stew.

  Then the saint’s final trial was upon him, which was a trial by boiling in oil. For the outraged Normals didst pour much olive oil into that soup pot and didst clamp down the lid with great force and three carpenter’s vices. And they didst convey the soup pot to an open space between their hovels, where they soon amassed the makings for a bonfire. Mightily that conflagration raged about the soup pot. And the Normals danced and shouted, saying, “This is how we cook a squid in Turkey!”

  But when the fires died, and the soup pot was opened, there was nothing inside. And just as the Normals saw this ominous emptiness, a chuckling was heard.

  And lo the third miracle! It was Old Calamaro. He was inside the dining hall again, feasting on almonds and custards and wine. And seeing this, the Normals didst flee in fright from the doings of this leprous magus.

  And though he was never seen again, peace reigned forever after between the Normals and the Boneless. For it was said among them that Old Calamaro had melted into the shingle at the shore, like unto an icicle in the sunshine. And they said that he dwelt now in the earth beneath their sandals, and that he watched all the lepers of the world, lest they ever again mistreat the wretched.

  But in truth the Old Squid ascended to the Land of Light and sits now among the choirs of the angels in the throne room of the Lord. Perhaps he even sits on a velvet stool beside the Savior’s giant golden throne.

  Or perhaps—who can say?—he reclines more comfortably on the white marble floor beneath the throne, peering out from his special place between the four golden legs. Perhaps he reclines on a tasteful Persian rug, eating stewed prunes with a silver spoon. Perhaps he smiles down toothlessly on all the prostrate supplicants arrayed before God’s throne. Perhaps he shakes his head and chuckles, as they beg for mercy.

  Submitted by

  STEPAN CHAPMAN, DOCTOR OF PANDEMICS

  Endnote

  (1) Father Ambrosius wrote the following scrap of Latin verse into a margin of his chronicle.

  Shunned by their unclean brethren,

  Who are shunned by the monks of my order,

  Who in turn are barely tolerated

  By the Moslem that surround us.

  Who is the lowliest of the low?

  Who is most outcast?

  Cross References

  Chronic Zygotic Dermis Disorder; Diseasemaker’s Croup; Extreme Exostosis; Razornail Bone Rot

  BUBOPARAZYGOSIA

  Country of Origin

  Kingdom of Nepal, Valley of Lakur (not verified)

  First Known Case

  Autumn of the year 1813, in the person of Benjamin Ransool, half-caste manservant to Major Marius Bullivant of the 2nd Bangalore Lancers. Major Bullivant was on detached service from his regiment, posing as a naturalist while mapping the terrain of Nepal’s more inaccessible regions. The manservant Benjamin had been sent north into Tibet some weeks before to exchange messages with the government in Lhasa, and was due to rendezvous with his master in a village at the foot of the Dhaulagiri. Benjamin arrived more than a week late and, according to the Major’s journal, “afflicted with a vile fever and a number of eruptions upon the skin of his upper torso.”

  In the course of the disease, the manservant became delirious and spoke of a high valley named Lakur and a village inhabited only by old men. Soon after, he lapsed into a comatose state. The swellings on the skin grew into buboes, then developed a leathery exterior while continuing to burgeon. The Major’s journal goes on to describe a shocking deterioration in his manservant’s condition, how weight loss became a visible wasting away while the breathing grew labored and wheezing. The buboes became pale leathery bulges the size of oranges, their surfaces taut and rough.

  The end came swiftly. The Major returned from foraging to find Benjamin Ransool lifeless, his body reduced to a collapsed husk. The swellings seemed to have hastened his demise, and when Major Bullivant entered his servant’s room he knew that they had burst, for their abominable contents lay on the bed next to the body. The Major’s journal is explicit: “At first I took the creatures to be a vermian or reptilian parasite, but as my eyes adjusted to the dimness I could see that they resembled in every way human foetuses.”

  By his own account, the Major did away with these parasites by putting the hut to the torch. Thus no evidence of this occurrence survives, except for the Major’s journal. However, the journal’s entries were to be verified long after the Major’s death, and under astonishing circumstances.

  Symptoms

  The Major’s journal disappeared soon after his death but resurfaced several decades later and came into the hands of his only son, Sir Randal Bullivant, the noted physician. The symptoms are clearly described therein: a high temperature leading to profuse sweating and fever; small red eruptions on the upper torso that increase steadily in size during the next two days. The sufferer experiences delirium prior to the descent into coma. The body rapidly wastes away while the swellings grow very large, bursting open soon after death and disgorging a parasitic vertebral zygote.

  History

  Sir Randal Bullivant was kind enough to provide me with full details from his father’s journal, but it was to be his final letter that would lay bare the terrible truth of this affliction.

  The letter began with advice that I consult the British Library’s copy of B. Mudthumper’s Encyclopedia Of Forgotten Oriental Diseases, then went on to inquire about the proceedings of the Symposium of Materia Medica being held at the Ashbliss Memorial Hospice. After this he wrote of a curious letter he had received the previous day from someone purporting to be a friend of his father’s from Nepal, and claiming to have information regarding the infection that had struck down his father’s servant.

  A time and a meeting place had been stipulated in the letter, and despite natural caution Sir Randal Bullivant was determined to keep the appointment. Having made clear his intent to finish his letter after the meeting, he then scribed a neat line across the page. When the writing resumed it was in the shaky script of someone greatly distressed. Without preamble, Sir Randal began to relate what had occurred.

  The meeting took place in a north London park, in a secluded arbor. The sender of the letter he described as “a leathery-skinned, bony old man no taller than five feet, incongruously dressed like an office clerk and carrying a small valise.” After introducing himself as Dojar Kel Nor, the stranger proceeded to claim to be 173 years old and a member of an ancient Nepalese mountain tribe that had survived down the centuries without the need for women to replenish their numbers. Sir Randal confessed that his immediate response was one of incredulity until this Dojar opened his valise and took out a pale, flattened pod the size of a plum. Sir Randal then recounted the following dialogue:

  “This—the fruit of the ultirel bush growing only in our valley, our Lakur. Inside, the dust of sons. When a man from the outer breathes the dust, he makes his sons and dies, but when his sons take the dust they do not die. We wished to explain this to your father, but too late.”

  “I have read all of my father’s letter and journals, sir,” Randal replied. “He made no mention of either you or a bush.”

  The man Dojar stared and said, “Not Major Bul’vant. His servant Ransool took the dust and was your father.”

  At this point Sir Randal’s handwriting grew erratic as he told of how the old man dropped the pale pod at his feet and said, “Take the dust, son of Ransool, and you will know truth.”

  The letter then ended abruptly with the words, “M______, my good friend, I have the pod and am taking it with me down to the house at Swaffham. One way or another, I will know the truth.”

 
; The outcome is well known. Sir Randal Bullivant was found dead in his Swaffham home. The post-mortem disclosed that he had died from cyanide poisoning. Fourteen large lesions dotted his upper torso. No pieces of sloughed skin were discovered at the death scene.

  My own conjecture of Bullivant’s demise is that the old man Dojar, alone or accompanied, followed him to Swaffham and watched his movements in the house. Once he had inhaled the abominable dust and the grotesque alterations began to take place, the watchers entered the house, harvested the hideous progeny, and decamped. On recovering his senses, Bullivant took a fatal dose of cyanide, shown to be from his laboratory in London. Who can say what passed through his mind in those dark hours of black revelation, but only the deepest despair can lead to self-administered oblivion.

  Cures

  No experimental results are available, and there is no known cure. However, purging with fire is certain to prevent any spread of the virulent dust.

  Submitted by

  DR. M. COBLEY B.A., F.R.S, S.L.D., B.S.F.A. (HONS)

  Cross References

  Ballistic Organ Syndrome; Diseasemaker’s Croup; Motile Snarcoma; Zschokke’s Chancres