by Unknown
However, there remains the problem of what to do with those unlucky individuals who allowed themselves to be experimented upon prior to the turn of the century. These pre-fin de siècle patients were promised wonder drugs and surgical miracles to reduce the number of years to which they were unduly sensitive. The very first procedures involved cutting out random decades from the memory by entering the brain and vandalizing it with electric tongs. This risky technique was only effective at removing the 1980s, which few people cared to remember anyway. Hallucinogenic drugs were also tried, in a bid to erase the 1960s in cases where this had not already happened. The problem was that sufferers who were born after that decade, and therefore had no personal experience of it, now no longer remembered that they had never been there. They assumed they no longer remembered it because they had been there, according to the uniquely peculiar ontological laws governing that decade. Thus, their awareness of the twentieth century was extended by a decade, rather than reduced, giving the allergy an even greater hold on their immune systems. By any yardstick, that looks bad on the recovery charts and graphs.
It was never going to be easy removing years from the twentieth century that had occurred before the birth of the patient. There were no memories to extract. With the failure of surgery and mescaline, it was decided to turn to philosophy. Doubts were raised in the minds of the sufferer as to the concrete reality of a non-experiential year. Berkeley and Hume were quoted at length. Reality is unreal, and all things, even your wife and shirt, are illusions. A man or woman born in 1935 might thus be persuaded that the years 1900 to 1934 were figments. This approach was rather powerful. The long and the short of it was that for most of these patients the years of the twentieth century to which they were allergic became fewer and fewer. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to totally eradicate a malady. There will always be one unit that is immune to the remedy.
Case Studies
Let us consider the frightful consequences of these treatments. We may take a single case. We shall call him Thobias G. Thobias volunteered himself for these experiments behind my back. He was unhappy in the castle. Surgery, hookah, metaphysics! The years to which he was allergic fell away rapidly. Soon, or at least after the bandages were unwrapped from his head, he was only allergic to a single year: 1957! Behind my back for a second time he was smuggled out of quarantine. Thobias G was able to live quietly in society, this despicably unjust society, like a normal subject, but with a crucial difference: any exposure, any at all, to the products, situations, or ideas of 1957 would bring him out in a monumental rash, a rash that was almost larger than his body. So, for instance, references to the death of Joseph McCarthy, the independence of the Malayan Federation, the launching of Sputnik I, the sacking of Marshal Zhukov from his post as Minister of Defense, the birth of Assumpta Serna, the expulsion of all Dutch nationals from Indonesia, the drawing of the first premium bond prize in the United Kingdom, the freeing of Archbishop Makarios, the sending of 1,000 Army paratroopers to Arkansas to escort nine black students into the Central High School in the town of Little Rock, the unveiling of the Jodrell Bank radio telescope, not to mention several trillion other things, would instantly propel the foolhardy and disobedient Thobias G into a cosmos of rash, for merely to state that he would “come out in one” is to fail at producing the right effect with words. Music from that year was even more damaging. Of West Side Story, its melodies and riffs, in conjunction with Thobias G, his face and torso, it is nicer not to speak. It might not seem so difficult to avoid the trappings of 1957, or any other single year of the previous century. On first appearance, this condition may appear preferable to being allergic to the entire century. However, consider more carefully and you will soon begin to appreciate the massive, grotesque irony. The untreated patients, those who remained allergic to the entire century, discovered that their ailment completely disappeared on the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve 1999 (also ending the debate about the true beginning of the next Millennium). Nothing in their environment was now part of the twentieth century, because the past only ever exists as memories, recorded or not, and the present is all we have. Therefore, they became totally free. However, by a convenient and vindictive twist of selective logic, the treated patients remained allergic to the details of their most stubborn years, whether that year was 1957, as in the case of Thobias G, or 1914,1938, 1976, 1991, etc. There was an annus horribilis for every traitor who tried to shame my reputation. (2)
[As For] Cures
I doubt it! Besides, I have found a neat use for the ungrateful unfortunates. I have gathered together a group of exactly 100 of them. They have been carefully selected. Each one is allergic to a different year from 1900 to 1999 (yes, I know that there was no “Year Zero”; go tell it to the Cambodians) so that the complete century is covered. One victim for every year. I drive them around the world in a large bus. I have changed careers. I now assist collectors and detectives with their hobbies and investigations. If an antiques dealer wants to know the real date of a piece of merchandise, to establish whether it is genuine or a fake, he summons me. If a forensic pathologist is unsure of how long a skeleton has been hanging in an abandoned closet, he rings my office without delay. I drive the bus to the relevant scene. The hundred men and women in my care are numbered. The date of their allergy has been branded on each forehead. I usher them in single-file past the ornament or cadaver. The one who comes out in a rash reveals the date! If there is no rash, then the merchandise or crime is very recent or quite old. I still accept payment. In the evenings, I torment my slaves, playing hopfrog with the leap-years. They deserve it. I am not well.
Submitted by
DR. RHYS HUGHES
Endnotes
(1) For an account of Mr. Pyatnitski’s amazingly satirical youth, please consult Byzantium Endures by Dr. M. Moorcock.
(2) In fact, the main reason for the difference between an allergy to a century and an allergy to a year is less contrived than that. A whole century has very few unique characteristics to define its parameters, other than simple dates. It is a vague item of chronology when it comes to keywords. Some people like to chant “war!” or “technology!” or “media!” or “the death of affect!” when asked to quickly summarize the twentieth century, but these qualities are applicable to any century. Yet a specific year, say 1929 or 1984, has concrete associations. It is less diffuse and thus more substantial in its definitions, and it is far easier to remain allergic to a substantial irritant than a diffuse one. Do you sneeze in a vacuum? Of course not! How about in a tornado made of pepper? I thought so! But let me record that my biggest disappointment is reserved for this paradox: if none of the patients had received a “cure,” they would now all be cured.
Cross References
Diseasemaker’s Croup; Pathological Instrumentation Disorder; Post-Traumatic Placebosis
VESTIGIAL ELONGATION OF THE CAUDAL VERTEBRAE
First Known Case
The first cases to be clearly documented were those of Henri III of France (1551 to 1589) and his brother, Francois, duke of Alencon and Anjou (1554 to 1584), both offspring of Henri II and his consort Catherine de’ Medici.
Symptoms
Patients are born with tails that unless surgically removed grow on average to 50 centimeters in length. If the tail is removed after the patient has already learned to walk, his sense of physical balance will be permanently impaired and most motor functions adversely affected. Inept removal of the tail can lead to a number of iatrogenic results, including infection, scar tissue, the retention of a cartilage stub rendering certain postures permanently uncomfortable, and injury to the spinal column itself. In some cultural circumstances, serious socio-psychological effects result as well, reflecting local beliefs as to the preternatural or even supernatural implications for the patient’s possession of such an appendage.
History
Until medical historian Louise Ducange properly researched the cases of the Valois princes, it had long been assumed th
at they were both hermaphrodites, sharing an abnormality that had been attributed first to Catherine de’ Medici’s lack of femininity and later to the presumed degeneracy of the de’ Medici line. Dr. Ducange’s study of the contemporary documents reveals, however, that the princes were in fact born with tails rather than the genitalia of the intersexed. Scholars encountering assertions of this fact in historical sources had previously taken them as evidence of the extremity of the hyperbolic rhetoric of the religious hysteria of the day, particularly since a rumor that the princes had tails became especially widespread following the St. Bartholomew Day’s Massacre (August 24, 1572). A Rouen physician, Jacques Duval, in his Treatise on Hermaphrodites (Paris, 1601), first made the claim that Henri III had in fact been a hermaphrodite. This contention, repeated as a fact in other texts, was by 1650 taken as a rational explanation for the “superstitious” story that the unpopular king had possessed a tail, and was applied by logical extension to his brother, Francois. In her prodigious research of the documents, Dr. Ducange fortunately discovered the obscure memoir of Angelique le Caustique, the accoucheuse who attended all of Catherine de’ Medici’s “confinements.” This memoir describes in careful, graphic detail each of the queen’s deliveries and notes that a surgeon, Eugene Eustaches, removed the tails within days of each birth.
For some time doctors did not know whether this rare disease was caused by a prehistoric primate gene lingering in the human organism or an error in embryo formation. Dr. Ducange’s admirably tenacious work has turned up suggestive (though not clearly documented) evidence that Vestigial Elongation of the Caudal Vertebrae may have appeared repeatedly throughout the venerable history of the Valois line. Other rare cases have been reported in modern times by pediatricians, who often remove the appendage without ever having informed the child’s parents that there was one. Given the recent over-bureaucratization of medicine, however, we can expect that all new cases will, in the United States at least, be well-publicized, in spite of the resulting social stigma, since typical HMO coverage does not include removal of such elongations.
Cures
At present, surgical removal at birth is the only cure. The gene for Vestigial Elongation of the Caudal Vertebrae, presumed to be located on the Y chromosome, has not yet been identified, but when it has been, we may hope that genetic engineering will eliminate it entirely from the human gene pool.
Submitted by
DR. L. TIMMEL DUCHAMP
Cross Reference
Diseasemaker’s Croup
WIFE BLINDNESS
Uxoria Oculitis
Country of Origin
France
Symptoms
ONSET: Failure to observe significant dates (birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine’s); breakfast myopia; sports-page gaze; TV transfixia; persistent inattention to spousal discourse.
MODERATE: Massive response failure (e.g., facial blackout, attire blankness, emotional coma, night stupors, indifference to marital aids).
SEVERE: Spousal nudity oblivion. (Only 11 complete cures of severe Uxoria Oculitis have been recorded in the scientific literature.)
History
The earliest account of “Wife Blindness” is found in the medieval French burlesque (chanson de jest) “Song of l’Ardno,” in which the hero, Ratatouille de l’Ardno, having been deprived in manly battle of both arms and a knee, becomes confined to a massive carved chair at the head of his dining table in a boar-hunter’s cottage where he is fed by plump shepherdesses from a small shovel, still in use today in regions of Normandy and Wales, and familiarly known as the “lard spoon.” Ratatouille’s manhood is the subject of jocular barbs and virtuoso repartee from these buxom attendants due to his inability to distinguish their uncouth rotundities from (in Rolph’s translation) “her him done knockèd up.” It is not until the late Renaissance that meticulously documented accounts of connubial sport within the court of the Louis Quatorze, the glorious Sunking, actually provide reliable data on the affliction’s progress. There the folk malady “Roman Eye” runs rampant among the courtiers, all of whom profess perfect hindsight toward their past dalliances and a lively vision of the wives of others. In the nineteenth century an epidemic of Uxoria Oculitis in the United States and Great Britain is thought to account for the writings of numerous suffragettes and temperance militants, although certain epidemiologists, notably Dr. Sarah Goodman, consider this etiology to represent “unsound science.” The medical community has reached no consensus on the lively question of whether domestic varieties of American male stupefaction are in any way related to the disease. The most widely discussed of these, Sunday Afternoon Football Zombyism, has been the subject of prolonged studies, but to date all results remain controversial. Researchers at the American Women’s Health Coalition have claimed to observe a high correlation between Football Zombyism in early marriage and virulent outbreaks of “wife blindness” in mid-life, but the Testosterone Taskforce of the American Medical Association has disputed these findings. What seems beyond debate is that no other malady has given rise to so many stimulating case histories, and uplifting accounts of Uxoria Oculitis continue to embellish many of the world’s weightiest medical tomes (cf. Rebecca Manard’s immensely diverting “Uxoria Oculitis and the Etiology of Milton’s ‘Methought I Saw My Late Espousèd Saint’: A Case of Miraculous Cure?” in The Journals of Sarah Goodman, Disease Psychologist (ch. MCCLXXXVII, p. 2394ff.).
Cures
(1) FLIRTATION: Of all therapies, the oldest and most widely recommended. Although not consistently salutary, flirtation reassures imperfectly seen wives of their visibility and normally feels pleasant without hazardous side effects. To be efficacious, therapeutic flirtation should be generously applied directly beneath the sufferer’s nose.
(2) THE BOOB JOB: A controversial remedy, widely abandoned by younger practitioners. Although this treatment has been known to produce immediate dramatic improvement, Dr. Sandra Russman of Sarah Lawrence University claims that such improvement is rarely of long duration and has been associated with side effects such as “Frankenstein Fixation,” a severe antipathy to scar tissue in genital zones.
(3) TELEVISION REMOVAL: The American Medical Association has described this painful therapy as “uniformly efficacious.”
(4) WIFE DEPRIVAL: About this surgical procedure, Doctor Buckhead Mudthumper’s Encyclopedia of Forgotten Oriental Diseases has the following to say: “Although Uxoria Oculitis (and its rarely mentioned cousin, Connubium Malauris or “wife deafness”) can be fatal, mild non-invasive procedures are always preferred. Radical wife deprival can be marriage threatening, with a high probability of side effects and great likelihood of contagion. Here the prudent physician will recall the first maxim of Hippocrates: “Do no ham.”
Submitted by
THE R. M. BERRY FOUNDATION ON MARITAL TECHNOLOGY (B. R. RYMER, D.D.S.; MARION L. BREYER, PH.D; REMY B. LA PHER, OB-GYN; RALPH EMBRY, M.D.; BARRY MYER, B.S., AND RAMON YPHRIL BARRE, Æ DOCT., ÇÄRR. MED. P. XXX.)
Cross Reference
Diseasemaker’s Croup
WORSLEY’S SUPPLEMENT
Region of Origin
Antarctic
First Known Case
Captain Frank Worsley and fellow explorers, 1914
Symptoms
Worsley’s Supplement, the cause of which is unknown, causes disjunction between physical and mental perception. The sufferer becomes convinced that there is always one more of something available than he can actually count. Thus, if there are three hedgehogs on a desk, he believes that there must be one more, though he cannot physically perceive it. If he can momentarily convince himself, through an act of misguided will, that there are in fact four hedgehogs, then he will slowly become uneasy, eventually convincing himself that there is always one hedgehog still uncounted.
At its worst, Worsley’s Supplement leads to a repeated and frantic enumeration of objects, the number of objects perceived rapidly escalating with no real relation to the number of objects actually there. So
on the sufferer believes himself to be, so to speak, waist-deep in hedgehogs. In more mild cases, the sufferer affects a truce with the uncertainty of the objective world around him, navigating his world with statements such as those often uttered by my cousin and fellow-sufferer Kiteley: “Hand me that hedgehog or hedgehogs, if there be in fact any hedgehogs at all.” Treatments include Kline’s Depravation Technique and an attempt to neutralize the illness through Goeringer’s Syndrome.
History
First categorized wrongly in The Trimble-Manard Omnibus of Insidious Arctic Maladies as a subcategory of the general dementia popularly known as Ice Fever, Worsley’s Supplement seems common in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and in other places in which luminosity, expansiveness, and blankness of surface combine. There has been some speculation that Worsley’s Supplement is parasitic in nature, but that the parasite remains dormant until environmental conditions activate it. Once activated, however, the parasite remains active. There is some sense that the illness is contagious.
As Captain during Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 Antarctic Expedition, Worsley found himself exposed to extreme conditions. Tracking across frozen wastes both he and several of his men, as Shackleton himself recorded, began to feel there was always one more member of their party than could actually be counted. Worsley, armed only with Shackleton’s incomplete and inaccurate Trimble-Manard Omnibus believed himself to be suffering from Ice Fever and expected the illness to be transitory, butupon returning to England found the illness to persist. In his London apartment, objects seemed to accumulate around him. When he took his hat off the rack, he had the distinct feeling that there was another hat on the rack waiting to be taken off as well, though he could not physically perceive it. Without the task of surviving in the Antarctic waste available to distract him, he became increasingly distraught, eventually reaching the point where he believed there was always one more of himself in the room than he could count. He had the sense that he was proliferating, always one more of him about to arrive. Eventually he was found dead in his library, surrounded by multiple suicide notes, bullets riddling the walls as if he had had to shoot 20 or 30 pseudo-visible manifestations of himself.