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

  Cures

  As yet there is no cure for the virus. Symptoms may be treated but not eliminated; thus, infection remains a death sentence.

  Submitted by

  DR. L. TIMMEL DUCHAMP

  Cross References

  Diseasemaker’s Croup; Female Hyper-Orgasmic Epilepsy; Pentzler’s Lubriciousness

  DISEASEMAKER’S CROUP

  Description and Symptoms

  An affliction, morbid in its intensity, unfortunate in its scope, afflicting those who habitually and pathologically catalogue and construct diseases.

  Obvious initial symptoms include headaches, nervous colic, a pronounced trembling, and one of several rashes of an intimate nature. These, however, taken together or apart, are not enough to guarantee a diagnosis.

  The secondary stage of the disease is mental: a fixation upon the notion of diseases and pathogens, unknown or undiscovered, and upon the supposed creators, discoverers or other personages involved in the discovery, treatment or cure of said diseases. Whatever the circumstances may be, once and for all the author would warn against any trust being placed in the specious advertisements in appearing, the eyes projecting; the usual way. The administration of small injections of beef tea or meat broth will assist in maintaining strength.

  At these stages the disease may be treatable.

  It is the Tertiary stage of Diseasemaker’s Croup, though, at which its true nature can be seen and a diagnosis confirmed. It is at this point that certain problems afflicting both speech and thought manifest themselves in the speech and writing of the patient—who, if not placed under immediate care, will rapidly find the condition deteriorating.

  It has been remarked that the invasion of sleep and a boiling two ounces of the point of suffocation; the face becomes swollen and livid, the throat is a hereditary tendency, and the tongue assumes the natural characteristics of the lungs, supervene. The emotion is liable to be excited by whatever recalls forcibly to the disease in question, which are so perseveringly and disgustingly paraded before the public eye by quacks.

  Tertiary Diseasemaker’s Croup can be diagnosed by the unfortunate tendency of the diseased to interrupt otherwise normal chains of thought and description with commentaries upon diseases, real or imagined, cures nonsensical, and apparently logical. The symptoms are those of general fever; coming on suddenly, round swelling, just over the knee pan. When quite chronic, and finally, perhaps vomiting, offensive fogs. Jalap is an alkaline and presents itself as a colorless, and painting the large round worms which occur in the intestines

  The most difficult part of the detection of such a disease is that the class of people who are most likely to suffer from Tertiary Diseasemaker’s Croup, are precisely the people who are least questioned, and most heeded. Thus: they may be, nourishment cannot of ginger and rectified spirit, the veins turgid, the latter being evaporated by heat.

  It is by a great effort of will that a sufferer may continue to write and talk with ease and fluency. Eventually, however, at the final stages of the Tertiary form of the disease all conversation devolves into a noxious babble of repetition, obsession, and flux. Whilst the expulsive cough is going on, the veins turgid, the eyes projecting; the whole frame is so shaken, that the invasion of epidemic has been preceded by dense, dark, and if this is not gratified, melancholy, loss of appetite, perhaps vomiting, heat and the tongue assumes the natural characteristics of the bruised root.

  At this time, the only cure that has demonstrated its reliability in the war against Diseasemaker’s Croup is a solution of Scammony. It is prepared with equal parts of scammony, resin of jalap, and for all the author would warn against any trust being evaporated by heat. Scammony is one widely distributed, though not always actively developed; the face becomes swollen and livid, the throat is more inflamed, and may be, once and for all the author would warn against any trust being placed in the intestines.

  Sufferers of Diseasemaker’s Croup are rarely aware of the nature of their affliction. Indeed, the descent into a netherworld of pseudomedical nonsense is one that cannot fail to excite the pity and sympathy of any onlooker; nor do the frequent bursts of sense amidst the nonsense do more than force the medical man to harden his heart, and to declare, once and for all, his opposition to such practices as the invention and creation of imaginary diseases, which can have no place in this modern world.

  When bleeding from leechbites continues longer than is required by the system. They are seized with a boiling two ounces of sleep and a boiling two ounces of the specious advertisements in question, which are so perseveringly and disgustingly paraded before the public eye by quacks. Scammony is liable to be excited by heat. On the second day when the eruption in a strong tincture of iodine will generally suffice for all.

  This is not madness.

  This is such pain.

  The face becomes swollen and livid, dark, and consisting of bicarbonate of potash, sesquicarbonate of ammonia and rectified spirit, the expulsive cough is going on, the habitual consumption of a larger quantity of food than is thought necessary.

  When the mind the beloved scenes.

  Whilst the beloved scenes.

  They may also become enlarged.

  Submitted by

  DR. NEIL GAIMAN

  Cross References

  Ballistic Organ Syndrome; Bloodflower’s Melancholia; Bone Leprosy; Buboparazygosia; Bufonidic Cephalitis; Buscard’s Murrain; Catamenia Hysterica; Ceòlmhar Bus; Chronic Zygotic Dermis Disorder; Chrono-Unific Deficiency Syndrome; Clear Rice Sickness; Denegare Spasticus; Delusions of Universal Grandeur; Di Forza Virus Syndrome; Download Syndrome; Ebercitas; Espectare Necrosis; Extreme Necrosis; Female Hyper-Orgasmic Epilepsy; Ferrobacterial Accretion Syndrome; Figurative Synesthesia; Flora Metamorphosis Syndrome; Fruiting Body Syndrome; Fungal Disenchantment; Fuseli’s Disease; Hsing’s Spontaneous Self-Flaying Sarcoma; Internalized Tattooing Disease; Inverted Drowning Syndrome; Jumping Monkworm; Ledru’s Disease; Logopetria; Logrolling Ephesus; Menard’s Disease; Mongolian Death Worm Infestation; Monochromitis; Motile Snarcoma; Noumenal Fluke; Ouroborean Lordosis; Pathological Instrumentation Disorder; Pentzler’s Lubriciousness; Poetic Lassitude; Post-Traumatic Placebosis; Postal Carriers’ Brain Fluke Syndrome; Printer’s Evil; Rashid’s Syndrome; Razomail Bone Rot; Reverse Pinocchio Syndrome; Third Eye Infection; Tian Shan-Gobi Assimilation; Turbot’s Syndrome; Twentieth-Century Chronoshock; Vestigial Elongation of the Caudal Vertebrae; Wife Blindness; Worsleys’ Supplement; Wuhan Flu; Zschokke’s Chancres

  DOWNLOAD SYNDROME

  Upload Syndrome, Notehead. Pegboard Paralysis, It’s In My Machine, Mail Me, You’ve Lost Me, What, Void, Delegation

  Country of Origin

  United States

  First Known Case

  Arthur H. McCollum, a meticulous note-taker and archivist who in 1939 was sectioned after flipping out alone in a funhouse. It transpired that he felt the need to instantly record or verbally relate everything that occurred to him physically or mentally. Dropping his notebook when surprised by a ghoul and thus unable to record or pass on his experiences, McCollum had subsequently undergone mental overload through the remainder of the ride, emerging with foam spurting from his gob like a bath toy. Dr. Wilhelm Reich concluded that McCollum had been involved in “preventative archiving,” the passing off of thoughts and experiences the moment they have occurred. McCollum thereby sought to maintain an almost totally empty mind. “He regards the long-term harboring of thoughts,” wrote Reich, “as a nuisance at best and at worst a violation.” The bulk of Reich’s papers on the condition were lost in the Food & Drug Administration’s burning of his literature in 1959. Since then advances in technology have facilitated an epidemic of the syndrome.

  Symptoms

  1. Constant talking with aid of mobile phones and email; 2. near-zero memory retention; 3. dead stare; 4. blithely confident attitude.

  Development, Cures, and Comments

  The habit of thinking and recalling in their appliances rather than the
ir own heads has left the greater proportion of the populace as empty, predictable, and available as an arcade duck. Even when mismanaged into a moment alone the sufferer will state where he is and what, if anything, he is thinking. For millions the reluctance to introspect has led to the actual inability to do so. For others the world has always been so. The archaic practice of contemplation is not missed by those who, having never had an original idea, have never gotten a taste for them. They will speak of celebrity or, when pressed, mini-veggie preparation. Conversation is a brush of tumbleweeds, lacking all anecdotal detail, as in: ‘This guy was, like, ‘Hello?’ and I was like, ‘Excuse me?’” It becomes entirely reasonable to say in surprised exasperation, “How do you expect me to remember something we talked about half an hour ago?” As Ken Stinnett bellowed from the upper ledge of a burning cathedral last year, “Since the procedure which has become known as ‘giving it the wave-through’ or simply ‘voiding’ has become common behavior, churches and multinationals have never looked back. The masses trample each other in their rush to forget. Yes my beauties, dispute my fury and I’ll really commence. A man lives dilute, his death is a watercolor, we look upon it and pretend to learn. Pieces of law as medals, that’s as fertile as it gets. Tomorrow-dollars met our eyes for years before we realized they weren’t getting any closer didn’t they? So I’m naked, so what? Oh, here come the cops, what a surprise. Peering at my expertise eh madam? I don’t blame you. These are dry times and getting drier. The wrong solution closes the curtains, a slumber less natural than death. Eh, what? Cease and desist? What kind of yammer is that?” Stinnett’s words were confirmed by his subsequent slaying by police and the blank stare that greets the mention of his name today. Research into nerve interfacing continues apace. Technologically, the ideal is to record all thoughts before they can surface to inflict texture and mayhem on the conscious mind. The pursuit of a cure is becoming hourly less a matter for urgency. A cure for what? Something forgotten. We are faced with the “I am Legend” paradigm. When the majority of the world population suffers the same condition, does it become the “new normal”?

  Submitted by

  DR. STEVE AYLETT, BENWAY MEDICAL CENTRE, LONDON

  Cross References

  Chrono-Unific Deficiency Syndrome; Diseasemaker’s Croup

  EBERCITAS3

  Ebermarcelasolerrochi Giglic

  Country of Origin

  Argentina

  Basic Symptoms

  On first contact, symptoms range across the entire spectrum of daftness (mooning, inappropriate sighing, carving initials on trees with bare tongue, other stuff).

  First Known Case

  February 2001, Mr. Orejitas Entrerrosca, age 34, engineer and (unsuccessful) writer

  General Remarks

  A pathogenic fallacy belonging to no family of diseases; it wants to start a family of its own, in an old colonial mansion on the pampas; watermelons in the garden; a family called the gliglics; it hopes to be head (or yerba) of this family.

  Ebercitas is a thematically archaic but dynamically modern affliction that causes a man to rapidly lapse into the doleful condition of trying too hard to impress a woman he has never met. It is a highly specific variety of Balconia, which is itself an extreme form of the common tendency for a man in his mid-30s to abruptly adopt the trappings of romanticism (see Missing Out, the Genesis of Belated Conquest by Dr. Smugger Newhouse). However, the levels of emotional anguish between the conditions are clearly defined and do not shade into each other. Rather they leap: like a man ascending a mountain range from plateau to plateau by employing springs on his boots. In normal cases of Romantophilia, the man merely starts to wear looser shirts, with flapping cuffs and soft collars. He may also learn to play a tune on the mandolin. Generally, further deterioration stops here. A chronic lack of balconies and receptive damsels in most parts of the industrialized world provides an automatic (environmental) remedy for the disorder, in the same way that a hangman’s noose provides an instant tourniquet (though perhaps not “cure”) for a condemned prisoner with a nosebleed or a cut tongue from his final meal. However, where balconies and damsels are available (in certain southern states of the United States, France, Sardinia) true Balconia is free to develop unchecked. The man will actually wear his loose shirt, and play his mandolin tunes, in public, under a genuine balcony. There are three broad categories of outcome: (a) she is not at home and he pines (18-month recovery period, minimized by regular bathing in candlelight amplified through a powerful lens), (b) she listens and is won over and they marry (five-year recovery period, maximum: see Very Old Cynical Jokes and Other Shapes of Emotional Armour by Dr. Grün Sardonicus), (c) she listens and is not persuaded and throws down a saucepan (Concussions: a Compendium of Vertical Impacts by Dr. Smorz Mancando; Bruising: a Sample Book of Colors by Dr. Monk Eastman).

  However, Ebercitas itself is much rarer and more lethal. It causes possibly the most precise form of sentimental madness in medical lore. Its origin can be traced to (and indeed is wholly reliant upon) a single individual. A lady living in the Barrio Panamericano of the city of Córdoba in the country of Argentina. Because this is a scientific article, remarks such as she is extremely beautiful, I love her, my sweet zapatillas listas, come to me! Ven ¡ay! ven, mi belleza soñadora! how I adore you! are entirely out of place and may not be included, except by way of educational example. Her name is Eber M. Soler and she is a teacher of Phonetics. I love her (example!). Anyway, for reasons that are still being investigated (a geomagnetic survey is currently underway), she appears to have a peculiar effect on distant men: once they know of her existence and her address (which is why it must be withheld from this report) they become obsessed by the need to impress her, frequently pushing themselves beyond their meager talents to do so. The results include appalling poetry, music, art. They also include good poetry, music, art. Sometimes they include superb poetry, music, art, the equal or superior of anything that has ever been written, composed, or painted. As an example of the first category, we may simply mention that a man might write a bad sonnet that concludes with the lines I kiss the ground at your feet! (see The Guide to Counting Syllables Correctly in Verse Formats by Professor Ukiah Emordnilap) to which the divine Eber (if she deigns to respond) might answer: in that case, it’s lucky I cleaned the house early this morning! Such a reply is both charming and distancing. Another man, learning of this particular riposte to a particular suggestion, might then write to her: I DON’T kiss the ground at your feet! No, not at all! Instead of that, I hereby KISS your shadow! All the cleaning in the world won’t make your SHADOW go away! Not even if you swept it with a broom for a hundred centuries you be able to sweep away your shadow! ha, ha! So there, my wonderful, witty clever clogs! I have defeated you at last! In truth I have triumphed: in my fantasies I have kissed your warm lips, and continue to kiss them. But in reality, I have kissed your SHADOW! And if, by some strange happening, you DO manage to sweep your shadow away, you’ll have to search all over the world (and beyond the edge of this world) for it. And because the shadow will grow lonely without you, it might turn bad and start doing unhappy things. Eventually, when you are reunited, it won’t want anything more to do with you. lit will consider itself betrayed and will act like a spurned lover! (Incidentally, she is not your clever clogs: she is mine.) To which the lovely Eber will not respond at all, because she is too busy teaching Phonetics.

  A side effect of Ebercitas has massive cultural implications. In essence, it has influenced the totality of human aesthetic endeavor, which is a paradox for such an extremely localized and focused malady. Because the most excellent Eber is too busy to read or hear or view everything that is sent to her, she has stored it unconsumed in her house, which is now crammed with wonderful works: it has become a museum of artistic genius. Men have sent her their best poems, songs, pictures, and not receiving a reply (because she is so busy), they have destroyed all (if any) copies in their possession, leaving Eber as the sole guardian of the materialized talent
in question. The authorities of Córdoba want to publish her house. After all, can an unread poem truly be said to be a poem? Is it (or is it not?) the same as a poem that does not exist? This question and others are destined to be explored in a myriad undergraduate theses in a multitude of universities. As for what would happen if a victim of this affliction met Eber M. Soler in person, it is unwise to imagine. Suffice to say that most scholars believe that such an outcome (termed Soler stroke by insurance agents) would be as fatal to the unfortunate (fortunate?) man as the detonation of a tactical nuclear device.

  Prognosis

  The development of Ebercitas seems almost certain to take a sudden and dramatic metaphysical turn. Eventually the gorgeous Eber will be able to give up her job teaching Phonetics, because a more lucrative source of revenue will become available to her. Consider that her house is full of unpublished works of astounding excellence, but that the varieties of artistic excellence are finite: it is clear that these works will eventually be duplicated by chance in other parts of the world by independent artists. Their creators will believe them to be original and will launch them into the public domain, whereupon Eber will simply search through her archives and produce the identical work, still sealed inside its stamped and dated packaging (see How to Hire X-Ray Machines and Employing Archivists on a Shoestring by the Röntgen Seek & Describe Foundation). This proof of copyright (and the works in question are always specifically created for her as a gift, including the copyright) and subsequent litigation will nearly always guarantee large sums in compensation, generating a very comfortable income for Eber. It will also pay for her to attach wheels and a large sail to her house. Only by thus moving around might she change her address from day to day and evade the attentions of the postman and his sack of artistic merit. For a balance must be struck between acquiring fresh sources of income and crowding herself out of her own house. As the months pass, creative types will realize the inadvisability of producing works which might already exist in her archives. Thinking carefully about this will inevitably lead to thinking more specifically about her. The infection will rapidly take hold of their nervous systems. They also will wish to create works for her, according to the standard (albeit remarkable) pattern. However, these works will have to be inimitable. The form of the gift will remain comprehensible, but not its substance. Thus copyright issues will be avoided. To achieve this, the authors will write books full of random letters, and the musicians will compose tunes from random notes, and the painters will cover canvasses with pixels of random color. To deliver these gifts, they will speed past her sailing house in motor vehicles, on horseback, atop rocket boots and cast them over the railings of her balcony, through the open window. She will collect them at her leisure and deposit them in the archive. Her sails will fill with the winds of Argentina, the cold wind from the south and the north wind with its dust and hot heavy air. If enough books are constructed entirely from random letters, the laws of chance state that some will make perfect sense. If enough tunes are assembled entirely from random notes, the same laws state that some will be haunting and beautiful and say all the things you wanted to say without words. If enough pictures are painted entirely from random dots of color, those laws also ensure that some will be portraits of you, and me: our births, lives and eventual fates. And so, somewhere on the pampas, perhaps along the rim of the Andes, in a moving house, the book of your life and death, its melody and its image, will exist. And once she has been deprived of earning a salary through litigation, she will turn her vast intelligence toward inventing a new source of income. She will rent out by the hour these relevant works, renaming her house (with the greatest respect to Jorge Luis Borges) the (multimedia) Mobile Library of Babel . . .