The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide To Eccentric & Discredited Diseases

by Unknown

  Cures

  Patients have found that if they keep their eyes bandaged and lie on a flat neutral surface, the symptoms, though still present, are manageable. Two more ambitious cures have been attempted with limited success. Kline’s Depravation Technique consists of placing the patient in a white room devoid of objects, with neutral surfaces. Despite results at times not unlike eye bandaging, the technique is limited by the fact that deprived of other objects, the individual tends to take itself as its own object, and to believe there is more of themselves than they can count. In the worst cases, such as that of Rudd Theurer, they come to believe that the room is packed too tightly with manifestations of themselves and die seemingly of suffocation.

  Goeringer’s syndrome, induced by darkness and confined spaces combined with an allergic reaction to the spores of Goeringer’s cèpe, causes the perception that there is always less of something than one can see with one’s eyes. Even in a room packed with hedgehogs, no hedgehogs are seen. Initial attempts at contracting it as a cure, however, have led the patients to believe that there is simultaneously more and less of something than can be perceived, causing a mental decay much more rapid than either disease individually. Swaddled in our furs, we continue our research on Worsley’s Supplement with our cousins Kiteley, the wind shrieking outside our hut, but as of yet no major breakthrough has been made.

  Submitted by

  DR. BRIAN EVENSON, ET AL

  Cross Reference

  Diseasemaker’s Croup; Diseasemaker’s Croup

  THE WUHAN FLU

  Wangji-Cunzai or “Forgetfulness-of-Being”

  Country of Origin

  China

  First Known Case

  Twelve members of the farming commune Xiaping. When the authorities arrived at the commune, they found only the blind knife-sharpener Lesang Gao. Gao was seated on a three-legged stool, his left hand clutching a whetstone, his right hand a knife that had been sharpened to such an edge that it could cut a single dropped hair. As he worked, he called the names of each commune member in turn but received no answer. Lesang Gao was initially held for suspected murder, but subsequent events proved this charge unfounded.

  Symptoms

  “The areas of his body not covered by clothing—his hands, his face, even his hair—began to glow. His skin had the brightness of reflected moonlight, a brightness that increased until it seemed like mountain snow beneath the noonday sun. Then his body was snow: glittering particles that were picked up by the breeze and blown about the yard, shining brightly before disappearing altogether. Han’s clothing and the report he was reading fell to the ground. I noted their position but did not touch them.”—Li Tsu, member of the emergency medical team, bearing eyewitness to the dissolution of team member Han Chen.

  History

  The mystery surrounding the disappearances at Xiaping remained unsolved for almost 10 years. Xiaping was cordoned off and signs posted that warned of a “highly virulent bacterium or virus of unspecified origin.” In 1968, Dr. Junji Chen of the Beijing Medical School led a sampling mission to Xiaping. He lost two members of his team but, in doing so, identified the commune’s 1959 agricultural report as the causative agent, in particular a portion of the text occurring between pages 182 and 184.

  Dr. Chen published his findings in 1969 and introduced what has come to be known as the Chen Hypothesis. Briefly, many repetitive tasks within living systems are maintained by unconscious action (i.e. the autonomic system), breathing and the beating of the heart being two examples. Dr. Chen proposed that continued coherence of the body is also maintained by an autonomic system. The events at Xiaping could be explained by a sequence of words being capable of “short-circuiting” this autonomic system, thereby leading to entropic disordering of the body’s atoms. The energy released during this process would explain the brightness that witnesses had reported. For obvious reasons, the specific sequence of words that acts as the causative agent cannot be identified.

  Dr. Chen thought that the disease might be confined to Mandarin Chinese. However, recent disappearances in Turkey and the United States bear disturbing similarities to those that occurred in the farming commune of Xiaping. It thus appears that word sequences capable of infection may spontaneously arise in any language. Alternatively, the original Chinese sequence may have mutated into a form compatible with these other languages.

  Cures

  Due to a lack of experimental subjects, research has focused on prevention rather than cure. It is clear that literacy, involving both perception and comprehension of the written word, is a pre-requisite to infection. No one has been infected in conversation or by audio transmission over radio or television. Extremists have called for a general ban on the written word. A more prudent course would suggest avoidance of those works known or suspected to be tainted. These include: The Xiaping Annual Agricultural Report for the year 1959 (1); William S. Burrough’s novel The Ticket that Exploded (Turkish translation); any works originating from the Old Algonquin Bookstore in Denver; and The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases.

  Submitted by

  DR. G. ERIC SCHALLER

  Endnote

  (1) The buildings at Xiaping and their contents were burned to the ground in 1970 specifically to prevent further infection. However, copies of the 1959 Annual Report are rumored to still exist, presumably unread, in the government offices at Beijing.

  Cross References

  Buscard’s Murrain; Diseasemaker’s Croup; Fuseli’s Disease; Hsing’s Spontaneous Self-Flaying Sarcoma; Printer’s Evil

  ZSCHOKKE’S CHANCRES

  Phumaphoneis Zschokki

  Country of Origin

  Russia (Crimea region)

  First Known Case

  Yevgeny Flocon, Crimean farmer, diagnosed November 10, 1897

  Symptoms

  Rapidly developing tissue cavity of up to four inches across and approximately half an inch in depth, with internal growths, found almost invariably on the extremities. Cases of multiple chancres are rare; no associated pain or infection. While the precise nature of the disease remains poorly understood, it is generally thought to be a variety of Planter’s wart.

  History

  First identified by Dr. Achim Zschokke, while pursuing unrelated research in heredity among people living in isolated or so-called “backwater” areas. According to his running account, Dr. Zschokke noticed a “large, unusual lesion” on the upper arm of a farmer belonging to the village of Trenk. This was Yevgeny Flocon, described as a “basically fit” man of around 40 years of age; he exhibited no signs of fever or discomfort, but presented

  an open sore the size of a badge or belt buckle. The skin is bunched up around the irregular oval in a ridge of considerable firmness; inside the sore, whose walls are smooth, like new skin, are many little fingerlike growths, the color of ripe wheat, crowded together. I found them insensitive, or nearly so, to the touch, dry, a little warmer than the surrounding skin, and slightly flexible; approximately half an inch long, the tips barely protrude from the cavity. I asked if I might try to remove one of these, and the man indicated that he had repeatedly withdrawn growths and related matter, only to have them grow back. While unwholesome to look at, and possibly contagious, the subject complained only of a persistent itch, though mild. No idea as to pathogen. I pulled out one of the growths with tweezers; it separated from the flesh with a crisp, brittle sound, slightly fibrous, and trailing a single hairlike thread about three inches in length from its hexagonal base. There was no bleeding, only a slight discharge of milky fluid with a non-putrescent odor, not unlike freshly-butchered meat, and the patient sighed deeply.

  Under the microscope, Dr. Zschokke found the extracted specimen to be “a hollow crystalline crust-formation, containing a densely coiled mass of threads.

  Zschokke’s chancres are thought to be extremely common in the Black Sea region, but little more is known about their pathology. They are non-fatal, and apparently non-contagi
ous. In some cases, small pockets of gas will develop in the lining of the cavity; when the thin membranes connecting the growths is ruptured, the escaping gas usually will produce a low-frequency tone not unlike a flute played at its lower register; hence the chancres are also colloquially known as “singing sores” or “flute sores.”

  The most famous individual to contract the disease was Crimean poet and sculptor Egor Pluskat (1919-1977), born and raised in rural Wogau. A correspondent and admirer of Octavio Paz, Pluskat’s 1961 poem “Antinomies” contains this relevant passage:

  This Crimean sore,

  sings, when it is wounded.

  I tear it, it weeps a white tear,

  and cries—a low, long, single sob.

  It gives me a tender feeling,

  and I sigh,

  as though I had just made love.

  Cures

  No known cures—possibly cauterization.

  Submitted by

  DR. MICHAEL T. CISCO, C.C., B.P.O.E., S.V.S.E.

  Cross References

  Buboparazygosia; Diseasemaker’s Croup; Internalized Tattooing

  Stiff 3 by Dawn Andrews

  Dr Lambshead (right) conducts an X-ray scan at Combustipol General Hospital, 1943.

  Over the years, Dr. Lambshead has touched countless people. He has also touched people’s lives. Although many of his adventures wait to be enjoyed by future generations when the secret documents of several dozen world governments have been declassified, some of his work with other doctors is chronicled below. These “reminiscences” as we have called them reveal the depth and breadth of Thwack’s remarkable career. Any charges stemming from alleged illegalities described below have already been settled out of court by Night Shade Books. Please do not bother filing further lawsuits.—THE EDITORS

  1923: DR. MICHAEL CISCO

  I first met Dr. Lambshead in 1916, in Berlin. I was preparing myself for my first year of medical school by studying privately with Dr. Brosius, and Thackery had made a brief trip from England to treat my cousin, and good friend, the poet Simon Rheiner, for his addiction to morphine. Even at the tender age of 16, Thackery was a powerhouse of medical knowledge.

  The night of May 15, I, Thackery, and Felixmüller were visiting Simon in his apartment, when he rose to recite to us his new poem, “An Exodus,” and flung himself ecstatically through the open window, a syringe still held lightly between his fingers like a pen. He recited the single stanza as he fell (I later wrote it down from memory—it can be found in his collection entitled The Clitoris of the Zodiac). Thackery and I were both disconsolate, and our mutual mourning I suppose cemented our friendship.

  When I completed my residency, I became a peripatetic doctor in my own right, due chiefly to Thackery’s influence. Our paths crossed at least once a year for the next decade or so, often in places where such chance meetings were highly unlikely. For the most part, when we met, we would arrange to call on each other, but as Thackery never liked discussing medicine socially we were left with little to talk about. He labored in vain to interest me in cricket scores, and, when I felt I had the energy, I would try to engage his interest in Asian art, with comparably nugatory results. However, on one occasion, in the autumn of 1923, we happened across each other in Kraków—simply knocked shoulders in the street—and, with little evidence of surprise, he told me that he was rushing out to Kazimierz (the Jewish ghetto of Kraków) on an urgent call to an old friend. He asked if I would accompany him, and I said I would.

  This is the first time I have ever ventured to tell this story, and I do so now only because I have every expectation of my own death; my anti-typhoid is in its tertiary stage, and I am confined to the vaulted stone sewer beneath the Hôtel du Tond in Paris, the unwholesome air of which alone I can breathe comfortably. That night, Thackery and I penetrated the wilderness of ghetto streets, which seemed to me piled high with mounds of massive, broken furniture; a door swam into view in a dingy plaster wall as smooth as a woman’s thigh, and we were admitted somehow. Even then, I had considerable experience with house calls, and I intuited the gross outlines of the circumstances right away, as I am certain Thackery did; the girl before us, whose moon face was deeply scored by alien marks of anxiety, raw and fresh, was plainly the middle sister. The elder sister would be the sick one, and the parents were, for some reason, unable or unwilling to tend her. The girl conducted us back into the warrens of the house; we passed the moonlit kitchen, where I saw what must have been the father sitting at the table, his head resting on the back of his hand, and his hand resting on the table.

  The girl opened the door at the head of the stairs and stood aside, looking at us. When the door had closed behind us, I saw, by the light of the moon, a white room, pale and dim. On the bed, a pregnant woman lay, whose long regular breath we could hear, and whose sunken eyes and vacant, rigid smile were like smudges of powder on her pale face, and whose nerves hung in the air, rippling like sea-kelp in a weak current. They were like elastic, white branches, which emerged from beneath the one filmy blanket and diverged and split until they dwindled to fine white filaments. Thackery advanced to the bedside with his instruments, and I could hear him speaking, with effort, words intended to comfort her. He asked me to pour her a glass of water from the white ewer on the table, and as I walked forward to get it, one of her nerves brushed my face with a contact like a tiny, cold star. Now I was another character altogether, but my memory had no information for me. The trees were fantastically old, and vast, and black; they grew along what I suppose was the “bottom” of a blood vessel—I never knew which one—as though it were a dry riverbed. I had to make my way in a particular direction through the trees against the current of the blood, which was like a hot, red wind. The black branches of the trees rose and fell dreamily in the blast, and I walked for a long time. Eventually, I found a street and followed it. I found the house, and opened the door. I went inside, and down the hall. As I passed the kitchen door, I knew the old man would be there at the table to my left, but I knew, as everything I knew then I knew right away as if it were being told to me, that if I looked at him I would see him in the wrong way, and I would be too frightened by that to go on. I opened the door at the head of the stairs, and saw the woman who lay in the bed, her serrated lips still furled in a crisp, mummy’s smile, gazing up at a white figure that stood erect at the foot of her bed, caressed by her long nerves.

  After a long time, I was told again who I was and where I had been taken. Thackery had cut me free—my nerves had been, I was informed, caressing hers, and knitting with hers in the air—and dragged me downstairs. Subsequently I was conveyed, without my knowledge, to a private clinic, where I recovered completely. Thackery wrote to me some time later; the young woman had died shortly before we had entered the room.

  1948: DR. JEFFREY THOMAS

  I first met Thackery Lambshead in the fall of 1946, when he lectured at Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, on the effects of radiation he had observed first-hand at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I had graduated the year before, but was anxious to attend so as to see this legend in the flesh. Even then, Thackery cut an impressive and patrician figure, thick-set but not portly—his eyes seeming to convey a melancholy wisdom, nose somewhat pugnacious (as it had been broken once by a pugilistic pygmy enraged at the unexpected pain of inoculation), ears flared, mouth solemn but not dour. Being youthfully brazen enough to introduce myself after the lecture, I showed him an article I had written for the college’s medical journal on the odd prevalence of children of unrelated families born with a supernumerary eye in my hometown of Eastborough. He was impressed enough with the article and my esoteric interests to begin an active correspondence with me, and soon after I counted myself very privileged to share in several of his travels abroad (unfortunately discontinued as I began my career as a surgeon at Eastborough Hospital).

  I believe it was during our expedition to Ecuador in 1948 that Thackery earned his affectionate nickname of “Thwack” for his robust machete-wiel
ding while tracking down the Jivaro Indians in the shadows of the Andes. We teased Thackery that he should remember not to wield his scalpel with such vigor once he returned home.

  Thackery and I were keen on examining the methods the Jivaro employed in the creation of the tsanta, or shrunken head. In addition, rumors had wound their way to us, hinting that an offshoot tribe of the Jivaros was practicing some very startling feats of medicine and even of surgery, making much use of the local flora. This obscure tribe was apparently much shunned, even by the fearsome Jivaro (who once massacred a mining settlement of 20,000 Spaniards).

  With the aid of our guides, who had done some trading with the Jivaro previously, we were able to enter into one of their villages and were shown various examples of tsanta. They described the process of head shrinking to us in depth, though we did not see any actually created. The Jivaro believe in three souls: the nekas, or “ordinary soul”; the arutam, or “acquired soul,” which is introduced into the body via hallucinogenic-inspired spiritual visions; and the miusak, or “avenging soul,” which is created when an individual in possession of an arutam soul is murdered and it must be bottled up safely inside a shrunken head. It is the belief of the Jivaros that a person with an arutam soul cannot die. I had cause to recall this bit of folklore later in the expedition.