by Unknown
Submitted by
DR. JEFFREY THOMAS
Cross References
Chrono-Unific Deficiency Syndrom; Diseasemaker’s Croup; Fuseli’s Disease; Zschokke’s Chancres
INVERTED DROWNING SYNDROME
Country of Origin
Malta
First Known Case
A thorough analysis of historical documents (in the spirit of my belief that the truly great medical scientist—a title that others have bestowed upon me, much to my embarrassment—is a doctor of culture as well as of the corpus) indicates that the earliest case is that of 47-year-old Maltese fisherman Joseph Rafalo. On May 22, 1797, Rafalo returned to Gozo from his most successful day of fishing. That evening, Rafalo celebrated his record catch with his friends in a dockside tavern. According to the journal of doctor and local magistrate Louis Gonzi (the most reliable contemporary report still extant), Rafalo excused himself halfway through the evening. He was seen shortly afterwards by a passing prostitute, who thought that the fisherman was “vomiting profusely, probably of the strong wine.” Nothing more was seen of him until the early hours of that morning when his friends stumbled from the tavern and one of them stepped in Rafalo and slipped over.
Since then, cases of Inverted Drowning Syndrome have been observed in every part of Europe with the exception of Denmark.
Symptoms
The body begins to metabolize all of its nutrients toward the production of saliva. At first, this manifests itself in a greater than usual drool, rather akin to the salivation of the starving when the aroma of food is smelt. As the condition progresses, the sufferer is forced to spit continuously. Soon after, the amount of liquid produced is a steady flow, rather like that from a tap. The metabolization and subsequent dissolution of internal organs and viscera accelerates, and by the later stages the sufferer is unable to do little other than slump in a pool of their own self, mouths stretched wide to accommodate the outward gush of water.
History
Both medical science and the exciting branch of literature that specializes in the last words of eminent men (please see my anthology Either That Wallpaper Goes Or I Do, available in all quality booksellers) profited when Inverted Drowning Syndrome struck down the English neurosurgeon Dr. Thorpe Hall. Dr. Hall had the presence of mind to seize some nearby pen and paper, and, as he made his inevitable journey toward death, he wrote an account of his experience. The account is sadly incomplete, as the paper had to be rescued from the deliquescent remains of Dr. Hall. Much of the ink had smudged and run as a result, but one section remained that provides us with an insight into the dramatic symptoms of this condition:
. . . peculiar indeed in sensation . . . imagine biting into the juiciest of all oranges . . . only the juice persists on flowing and flowing and the orange cannot be removed from the mouth . . . feel like become human fountain . . . drowning from inside out . . . tell wife I always loathed that bloody hat . . .
There are periodic claims that Inverted Drowning Syndrome can be found outside of the European continent. The basis for these claims usually rests, however, on a now discredited 1987 case in Japan. This supposed example of IDS has been conclusively proven to be the sensationalized account of a particularly brutal gangland killing that utilized pressure hoses. It is now only quoted by the gullible or the clinically insane, both of which descriptions sadly fit a considerable proportion of other practitioners of my once honorable profession.
Cures
There are no cures known at this time. The Minsk Institute of Biological Research makes regular claims as to progress on its treatment involving the instant administration of a desiccating substance, but no clinical trials have yet taken place. I have heard rumors that this desiccating substance was originally designed for the packaging of computer parts, and has serious side effects upon human health. My opinion on the medical work of this establishment, and of Dr. Revutsk in particular, is well known and need not be restated here (except to add that my opinion is based solely on objective medical grounds and not at all on Dr. Revutsk’s nocturnal peeping activities).
Submitted by
DR. IAIN ROWAN
Cross Reference
Diseasemaker’s Croup
Stiff 2 by Dawn Andrews
JUMPING MONKWORM
Country of Origin
United Kingdom
Description and Symptoms
Jumping Monkworm is a disease caused by a microscopic parasitic worm, or nematode, transmitted via vellum to a human host. Despite their microscopic beginnings, nematodes can grow to 30 feet in length, and may damage both soft tissue and bone as they progress through the host’s body. Entering the host through the pores of his or her skin, the nematode eventually works its way to the optical nerve, where it affects size-height perception. In the early stages of the disease, sufferers imagine that the ground they are walking on is constantly being elevated. The illusion results in a repetitive leaping or jumping motion as the sufferer compensates for perceived height changes. As the worms grow in size, consuming and burrowing through brain tissue, the sufferer becomes increasingly delusional before falling into a coma. Death is inevitable and follows soon after.
History
Archaeological pathologist Dr. Rosemary Threep identified Jumping Monkworm in 1997 after examining skeletons removed from the cemetery at the twelfth-century St. Augustine Monastery at Wuppington Thragnell, in Dorset, England. The skeletons, all of monks from a monastery famed for the production of illuminated manuscripts, revealed webs of tiny stress fractures along the tibiae and fibulae of 11 of the 16 skeletons. The fractures were consistent with the jarring effects of continuous jumping up and down on a hard surface. Further forensic examination revealed cranial scarring consistent with the presence of a parasitic worm, later identified as a virulent subspecies of velluminius nematoda or vellum threadworm. A detailed account of Threep’s investigation is given in her seminal paper “The Jumping Monks of Wuppington Thragnell: Encounters with an Unknown Nematode,” published in Volume 65 of The Nematode Periodical.
While Threep was the first scientist to identify the disease, its symptoms had not gone unnoticed by medieval observers. An anonymous tenth-century chronicler, visiting the monastery at Monkton Thistle in Dumfrieshire, described a condition he called “Demonic Bounding” that afflicted several of the resident monks, causing them to “lurch upwards in a terrified manner, as if frightened by the flapping of their skirts or by demons that lurked therein.” The chronicle relates how papal emissaries sent from Rome attempted to drive away the demons by burning the monks at the stake, “where they continued to leap and strain against their tethers even as the flames did consume them.” Eleventh-century chronicler Egfric the Abstemious noted a similar affliction among the monks of Mudholm in Yorkshire. Egfric called the ailment “Ascent of Jacob’s Ladder” and attributed it to religious rapture. He describes how the monks’ “eyes stared skywards, as if heaven had showed itself in all its glory among the clouds, and they climbed with great vigor and yet did not leave the ground” (Egfric’s Rough Guide to Christendom, translated from the Latin by Alfred Pike, Flockpipe Press, 1926).
Cures
Threep believes that Jumping Monkworm died out with the dissolution of British monasteries between 1536 and 1540 and the resultant demise of the illuminated manuscript industry. Modern vellum production techniques, which include chemical curing and sterilization, ensure that there will be no recurrence of the disease. Because the parasite is believed to be extinct, no research into a cure has been carried out.8
Submitted by
DR. SARA GWENLLIAN JONES, UNIVERSITY OF TEETERING SPIRES
Cross References
Diseasemaker’s Croup; Mongolian Death Worm Syndrome; Noumenal Fluke; Postal Carriers’ Brain Fluke
LEDRU’S DISEASE
Hemorrhagic Tracheotuherculism Redunda (Skald’s Disease)
Country of Origin
Lappland (?), possibly ubiquitous in Scandinavia
First Kn
own Case
Konotop Terrsson, October (?), 1796
Symptoms
Subject develops large tubule structures in the fleshy portion of the sterno-mastoid musculature parallel to the trachea and immediately adjacent to/communicating with the major blood vessels, with which they are comparable in size, and whose walls may be subject to random lesioning. Associated are extreme pallor, discoloration around the eyes, periodic unpredictable hemato-ejection, anhedonia and apathia, cold sweats; anemia is a common epiphenomenal effect, as are fluid in the lungs and sleep apnea.
History
In 1796, Dr. Emil Ledru, who helped to pioneer comparative anatomy at the Sorbonne in the late eighteenth century, was one of the first European doctors to make a scientific visit to the Lapps of northern Scandinavia. While there, he encountered a number of new illnesses, of which the most severe, and most rare, bears his name. The patient was a young Lapp male of approximately 30 years of age, with what is described only as “a voice of a quality unique in my experience.”
“I was brought directly to a sort of rude hut, apparently flung together in some haste, but not flimsy. A young man, introducing himself as Konotop Terrsson, sat panting in the doorway, swathed in a heap of pelts such that only his upper torso was visible.” Ledru noted immediately his extreme pallor, the near transparence of the skin of his face, and the heavy bruising around both eyes. On closer examination, he found a slight acceleration of heart rate, an abundance of icy perspiration, and a mild fever; however, upon removing his depressor from the patient’s mouth, he noted it was smeared with blood, and that the patient’s breath smelled strongly of blood. After extensive scrutiny of the man’s mouth and throat, Ledru was unable to make a diagnosis. He did perceive, however, that small quantities of blood dribbled from the patient’s mouth from time to time, and that the floor of his hovel was strewn with an ample quantity of bloodied linen.
Dr. Ledru revisited the young man several times during his sojourn among the Lapps, later recording that he appeared to be both insensitive to pain and incapable of feeling pleasure. Eventually, he returned to Paris, still baffled by Terrsson’s condition. Upon making a second trip, he learned that his former patient had fallen through the ice the previous winter and drowned. After negotiations that necessitated the forfeiture of his entire supply of tobacco and a lens, Dr. Ledru was permitted to disinter the body and perform an autopsy. He discovered that Terrsson had somehow developed a pair of redundant miniature trachea, flanking the proper trachea and connected directly to the bronchae. These two tubes incorporated the walls of the internal carotid artery and the posterior external jugular vein in their structure, and there were minute intermittent fissures or lesions on the wall of the internal carotid that were subject to point hemorrhaging at pressures sufficient to force the blood up into the mouth. At this point, Dr. Ledru believed he had found the cause at least of that peculiar vocal quality previously mentioned. The condition has subsequently been found to be hereditary, appearing in early adolescence, and non-lethal—provided the subject sleeps on his side or stomach to prevent aspiration of hemorrhaged blood.
It is believed by some historians that this is the fabled “Skald’s Disease” mentioned in some Icelandic sagas—notably Snorri Sturluson’s tale, and by Master Flandus Null á Wallachia in his sixteenth-century folkloric compendium Fornicati Demonorum, which speaks of “those awful ancient bards, whose ringing voices filled the fjords and valleys from the shadowy doorways to their lonely, mystic huts, wherein they sat in the grim splendor of their capacitous furs, their chins dripping with gouts of angry, scarlet heart’s blood.” If this were true, it would not only lend credence to the theory that the status of Viking bards was, at least in some places, hereditary; it would also account for the persistence of a unique vocal styling, surviving in some Scandinavian folk music today.
There are no extant recordings of this distinctive sound, but it has been described as “adding a peculiar resonance to the voice, as though two or more were speaking or singing at once.” There are no approximate or true vocal structures in the tubules, but their sympathetic resonance seems to act as a sounding box to the voice; the most informative account compares the voice of a Ledru’s sufferer to “the buzz of an Indian drone.”
It should be noted, as well, that some experts see a connection between Ledru’s Disease and the practice of bloodletting from the tongue and genitals among pre-Columbian Meso-American Priest-Kings, suggesting a far greater range of Viking exploration than has hitherto been entertained by historians.
Cures
In 1921, Dr. Bethge Treml of Copenhagen endeavored to correct a case of Ledru’s Disease surgically, simply by excising the tubules, but this necessitated extensive repair of the attached blood vessels that ultimately proved inadequate. Several years later, Dr. Arvid Heferding of Frankfurt successfully closed the tubules without removing them, but as this did not rule out the possibility of unforeseen infection and blood poisoning, and in fact made treatment of these complications more difficult, his treatment is seldom recommended today.
Submitted by
DR. MICHAEL T. CISCO, C.C., B.P.O.E., S.V.S.E.
Cross Reference
Diseasemaker’s Croup
LOGOPETRIA
Country of Origin
In his landmark study of Oriental diseases, Dr. Buckhead Mudthumper contends that an early description of Logopetria can be found in Herodotus’ Egyptian journals. This view, however, is soundly ridiculed by Frichtenhammer in his 1977 article “Thumping Mudthumper,” in which the great neurologist argues that the disease originated not in the East, but in the Black Forest of Germany during the mushroom famine of 1854 to 1859. (1)
First Known Case
Despite the ongoing debate regarding its historical roots (see above), it is universally accepted that the first modern case of Logopetria was described by Dr. Wilhelm Harpsichord in 1971 (see Symptoms, below).
Symptoms
The symptoms considered definitive of the disorder are best illustrated through the following case history, originally published by Dr. Harpsichord in his incisive but clumsily-titled phenomenological study, The Thingness of Words and the Wordness of Things (East Minnetonka University Press, 1973).
The subject—let us call him Oliver—presented as a vigorous young man of 30, of a quick and ready intellect. He demonstrated a great aversion to expressing himself verbally, and indeed, it was only with the greatest effort that I convinced him to speak his own name. What followed was quite remarkable. Although I clearly observed Oliver’s lips form the three syllables of his name, no sound could be heard to issue forth. Instead, from his mouth dropped what appeared to be a wooden ball of irregular, though roughly spherical, shape. Further attempts resulted in the same phenomenon, and by the time Oliver had essayed a half-dozen attempts at speech, the floor around his feet was littered with a heterogeneous assortment of objects of various shapes, sizes, and compositions. Each attempted word produced a different linguistic artifact. “Solipsism” resulted in a silvery, metallic blob whose contours seemed to flow like water. “Telephony,” however, produced a feathery puffball of pale green that took several seconds to drift to the floor. “Futurology,” by contrast, resulted in a dense, pitted clump of grayish-black stone that fell to the floor with great force.
The production of these linguistic artifacts in place of spoken language is the defining feature of the disorder. In 1980, prominent disease psychologist Dr. Sarah Goodman established that these linguistic artifacts are in fact a kind of reified language. She demonstrated this by striking several of the artifacts with a rock hammer, producing a resonance or echo within which the aural equivalent of the spoken word could be heard distinctly. There is a lamentable scarcity of comparative studies of these objects, and the most prominent of these, Hilary and Bosch’s “Logopetria Artifacts: Three Cases” (Journal of Comparative Linguistics, Summer 1997), focuses only on patients producing American English, French, and Russian artifacts. The study concludes
that while Russian artifacts are often quite striking in color, tend to symmetry, and smell vaguely of turnips, French artifacts are generally less dense—even prone to wispiness—and redolent of a mild Neufchâtel. American English artifacts, by contrast, demonstrate a wild unpredictability of both form and composition, their only defining feature being—in Hilary’s words—“a repulsive scent reminiscent of fried chicken soaked in gasoline.” (2)
Because the symptoms associated with Logopetria are usually quite benign, few in the medical community were prepared for the terrible events of “Black Thursday,” when five doctors and scientists lost their lives during the course of what was intended to be a routine clinical examination. The following account is taken from a 1981 Louisville Eccentric Observer interview with Dr. Peter Haast, the only member of the medical team to survive the carnage.
Ethel Fripp [a 58-year-old resident of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, who had been diagnosed with Logopetria two years earlier] had agreed to the use of an electroencephalograph, which we hoped would provide some insight into the neurological basis of the disease. My role was to monitor the EEG readout from a small chamber adjacent to the testing room.
Everything proceeded quite normally as Mrs. Fripp produced artifacts in response to prompts for relatively simple words. As the words grew more complex, however, her brain activity began to increase significantly. It was clear that she was struggling. The fifteenth prompt produced a series of dramatic spikes in the EEG, followed by a burst of brain activity such as I’d never seen before. Something was clearly wrong. I dashed into the hallway in time to see [Dr. Winston] Jeffers stumble from the testing room, his lab coat spattered with blood. He expired in my arms, and as long as I live, I will never forget the staring horror in his eyes. (3)
