The Thackery T Lambshead Pocket Guide To Eccentric & Discredited Diseases

by Unknown

  In honor of this first Night Shade Books edition of the Guide, we have compiled a series of examples from prior editions. Before their inclusion here, some entries have had few enough admirers, due to the Guide’s often limited print runs. Stepan Chapman’s Obscure History provides a riveting appraisal of the Guide’s impact on the Twentieth Century, while the Chronology below gives the reader some sense of the built-in limitations Dr. Lambshead has had to work with over his long career. Finally, the inclusion of “The Malady of Ghostly Cities” demonstrates the Guide’s impact on other areas of study.

  Please note that wherever possible we have retained as many elements of the original presentation as possible. In some cases, this has been made difficult by the poor condition of the source material. Some “reconstruction” has been necessary. Although the original page header and footer styles have been preserved, the page numbers have been changed to avoid confusion.

  Whether through the psychedelic “Clockworm Orange” of The Putti or the delayed multiverse chronoshock of Samoan Giant Rat Bite Fever, readers will find that the Guide has covered more territory in its 83 years than the most intrepid Victorian explorer.—THE EDITORS

  A Chronology of the Guide’s Publishers

  1921–1923: Dr. Lambshead uses a hectograph machine to create copies of the earliest, stapled editions of the Guide. These early Guides are only 14 pages long.

  1924–1927: By 1924, Dr. Lambshead begins to print the Guide in little chapbook editions, using his old Underwood typewriter. Starting around 1927, Dr. Lambshead finds collaborators willing to add some crude illustrations and badly-reproduced photographs.

  1928, 1929: Dr. Lambshead begins using a Scottish medical publisher to produce perfect-bound copies of the Guide.

  1930–1940: John Trimble, explorer, outlaw anthropologist, and heir to the Trimble Fisheries fortune, pays for the cost of producing leather-bound hardcover editions. The Guide now averages 200 pages each year.

  The cover of the infamous 1997 edition (Boojum Press).

  See “Venereal Disease, 1997” in Dr. Stepan Chapman’s “Obscure History” (p. 284)

  1941–1945: Due to War shortages, Trimble is unable to continue financing the Guide during this period. As a result, Dr. Lambshead resorts to the previous circulars and saddlestapled editions.

  1946–1959: Chatto & Windus issues sumptuous 600-page editions with copious illustrations and photographs. Their editions often harken back to the Victorian era in design.

  1960–1990: Chatto & Windus bends to pressure applied by the British government as accusations of communism in the Guide ferment in the United States. Jolly Boy Publishing & Soap Company of Bombay takes over publication of the Guide. Many of the Jolly Boy covers feature Indian gods and goddesses. Others seem influenced by the rise of Bollywood. Dr. Lambshead breathes a sigh of relief on those rare occasions when Jolly Boy puts together a sensible-looking cover. In addition, Jolly Boy takes to publishing supposed “true-life accounts of murder and mayhem” amongst the diseases. Advertisements for books, food items, and other products soon follow.

  1991–2002: Boojum Press of California publishes the Guide when Jolly Boy goes out of business in 1990. Boojum Press editions are eccentric trade paperbacks with an ethereal, New Age feel. Often, the illustrations are irrelevant to the disease at hand. The covers are flashy and sometimes feature mushrooms or fairies.

  2003: Night Shade Books takes over publication of the Guide. Order and dignity are re-established as publishers Jason Williams and Jeremy Lassen apply the most stringent ethical and moral standards ever experienced by Guide editors and contributors. In protest, the estate of Oscar Wilde refuses to allow the Guide editors to reprint a quote from Wilde’s disease diary.

  The title page of the 1932 edition. At the time of publication (and even, according to some antiquarian book dealers), copies of this edition stank of mackerel. The Trimble Fisheries printing presses were located next door to their cannery.

  THE THIRTIES

  1932: GASTRIC PRE-LINGUISTIC SYNDROME

  FORMAT: LEATHER-BOUND HARDCOVER EDITION, 6 x 9

  PUBLISHER: TRIMBLE FISHERIES, ROBIN’S BAY, ENGLAND

  This disease was first published in the Guide amid much controversy as to the veracity of the findings—or even the veracity of the doctor in question. Dr. Lambshead had to persuade John Trimble not to excise the disease prior to publication—one of many arguments between the two great men. The difficulty in determining the difference between the syndrome and various traditional stomach ailments eventually led to a retraction of the disease in the 1957 Guide. Many unnecessary surgeries had been performed because of the entry. In 1965, Dr. Lambshead reinstated the entry when he experienced what he claimed to be a sudden bout of the syndrome.

  GASTRIC PRE-LINGUISTIC SYNDROME

  Alternatively Known as Aggressive Acid Reflux or Couzens-Goodman Syndrome

  COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:

  United Kingdom

  FIRST KNOWN CASE:

  Mr. X, a stable hand in the small Hampshire market town of A_____. He was 22 years of age, engaged to be married, and had no previous history of serious illness. Before Gastric Pre-Linguistic Syndrome had its debilitating way with him, he was by all accounts a strapping young fellow, in excess of six feet in height. (The true identities of all three patients have been suppressed lest my speculations as to the Syndrome’s origin—see below—cause offence.)

  SYMPTOMS:

  Stomach pain, increasing from mild to acute. Considerable “noise,” varying in volume and pitch, from the gastric region, audible by stethoscope. Small, seemingly random spasmic movements visible in the abdominal flesh. Inability to eat. Passing of blood in vomit and stool. Increasing weakness. In all three studied cases, the patient took his or her own life. If they had not, I believe that stomach rupture would have occurred.

  HISTORY:

  My first encounter with this singular malady occurred in the summer of 189-, when I was serving in general practice in A_____. My immediate predecessor had witnessed the first symptoms and had diagnosed a stomach ulcer. However, I soon ascertained that this malady, now much more advanced, was no such thing. I observed the small movements of his abdomen and listened to the “noise” via stethoscope. These sounds had no pattern that I could discern.

  I confess I was both puzzled and fascinated by these phenomena, but I dare say my fascination was not shared by Mr. X. As his disease progressed, I tended to him daily, but I regret I was unable to assist him, let alone cure him. Within a week, he was found hanged in the stable where he worked.

  I requested a post mortem. When I opened his stomach, I observed that the lining was perforated in many places. The perforations took the form of lines, both vertical and horizontal, of varying widths and depths. I scrupulously catalogued these strange marks.

  Miss Y was brought to my attention five years later. She was 18 years of age, a pretty young lady, the daughter of a country squire. She was a solitary person, who often sat in the fields reading novels and poetry. At times she rode a favorite stallion called Charley—who was kept at the same stables in which the late Mr. X had worked.

  By the time that Miss Y was referred to me, her syndrome was considerably advanced. I cannot imagine how much pain she had endured alone. Rarely have I felt myself so helpless as a doctor, and indeed the case of Miss Y distresses me more than any other. But briefly . . . she stole poison from my medicine cabinet, swallowed it and died.

  I performed a post mortem, and found to my astonishment the same marks on the inner wall and lining of her stomach that I had found on Mr. X’s stomach. Many of the marks were identical, though the order and pattern were different. Again, I took a transcription. The marks bore a passing resemblance to Egyptian hieroglyphs, though further discreet enquiries proved fruitless.

  Miss Y was my second encounter with the syndrome, which I named Aggressive Acid Reflux. There is however a third case in the literature. The Journals of Sarah Goodman describe a case that took place two yea
rs after that of Miss Y, in the Lancastrian village of W_____. I corresponded with Mrs. Goodman and visited W_____, a place of no great distinction. The case she described was of a man of considerable congenital idiocy (Mr. Z), who had been committed to an asylum for the persistent abuse of horses. The details are too distasteful to be recorded here.

  Of the three cases so far recorded, there is an equine connection, strengthened by the fact that two of the horses at W_____ had been sired by stallions from A_____! However, further investigation as to Mr. X’s and Miss Y’s dealings with horses, other than those noted above, has not been undertaken. I was advised in no uncertain terms that this would cause considerable offence and might even provoke legal proceedings, hence my circumlocutory manner. I can imagine certain things of Mr. X, knowing the drunken jests of which young men are capable, but I refuse to imagine such perversities of the delicate Miss Y.15 Any investigation of the stable itself is now impossible, as it has been sold and demolished.

  While pondering on the above, I had a dream that, I dare to suggest, might prove to be as significant as Mr. Kekulé’s, which revealed to him the structure of the benzene ring. I was floating, faced by a row of disembodied stomachs. Each one pulsed and gurgled, as had those of my patients. Then one of them sprayed my bare chest with a fine stream of acid and etched into my flesh the characters I had previously seen. I thought, “They are attempting to communicate with me.”

  Needless to say, I cannot prove any of this, not least due to the lack of further cases. Perhaps some combination of circumstances at A_____ was unique, but without any further data I cannot attempt to suggest what that combination might be. I have attempted to decipher the stomach markings but to no avail. Patterns are discernable therein, but I am unable to translate them. It is feasible that no translation is possible. What linguistic paradigms, I ask myself, does a stomach have, and to what extent are they shared by humans?

  CURES:

  None yet identified.

  SUBMITTED BY

  G.J. Couzens, M.D. [As related to him by his grandfather.]

  THE FORTIES

  1946: BURMESE DIRIGIBLE DISEASE • FORMAT: HARDCOVER, 5 x 8

  PUBLISHER: CHATTO &WINDUS, LONDON, ENGLAND

  After World War II, the Guide began to focus on the human costs of British Imperialism. Following a series of discussions with Lord Mountbatten in Bombay, Dr. Lambshead specifically solicited work from doctors known, at the time, for their contributions to modern Asian diseases. The publication of this entry ushered in a new period of legitimacy for Dr. Chapman. In 1940, he had been accused, while vacationing in Shanghai, of “exaggerated medical claims combined with unpatriotic conspiracy paranoia” by both German and Chinese officials. Held in a German prison for three years, Dr. Chapman found that upon his release in 1945 the world had forgotten his prior medical achievements.

  Burmese Balloon Boy Incident

  Introduction:

  The history of the Industrial Age provides numerous examples of illnesses connected with working conditions, ranging from coal dust silicosis to elevator operator’s palsy. One of the most grotesque industrial diseases ever reported was the Dirigible Disease that afflicted the so-called Balloon Boys of Rangoon.

  Country of Origin:

  In 1929, Burma was a province of British-controlled India. Burma’s most crucial value to the Empire resided in the rice grown in the Irrawaddy Delta, a “rice basket” for hungry India. Colonial administrators of the Imperial Pan-Indian Rice Consortium managed vast plantations there and shipped the rice by sea from Rangoon.

  The greatest challenge for these plantations was the transport of harvested rice from the swampy paddies to the warehouses at the dockyards. Flash floods washed out the roads each year. Barge canals filled with muck. Field mice and weevils invaded the rice sacks. And British trucks on rubber tires proved to be no improvement over ox carts. The mud that grew such excellent rice defeated every effort to move the harvest overland.

  History:

  An engineer of the Rice Consortium, one Mr. Jules Spratt, sent a letter to his home office in London and suggested the use of dirigible airships to transport the rice.

  Self-propelled blimps were very much in the mainstream of aviation at this time. Mr. Spratt’s plan was approved. Twelve new-model dirigibles were assembled at the Aircraft Guarantee Works At Howden. The new airship, christened the Spratt, was a modification of the Mayfly, a small-scale blimp that had proved its durability as a submarine spotter over the North Sea in 1917. The frames of the Spratts were built from imported Burmese teak.

  In 1930, when the Spratts first flew forth from their newly thatched hangars at the Irrawaddy dockyards, they were a source of great excitement and anxiety for the local populace. Only after each airship had been ritually purified by the incense and blessings of a Pongyi priest in a yellow robe would the Burmese go anywhere near the uncanny machines.

  However, after months of hearing the drone of airships overhead, the Karen people of the delta and the Shan and Kashin people at Rangoon came to accept the Spratts as a normal part of life.

  Mr. Spratt’s crew of aviators picked several older gentlemen from the dock workers’ township and taught them to perform simple maintenance tasks on the blimps. One gentleman stripped to his cotton longyi each day and scrubbed down the windows of the steering bridges. Another oiled the hinges of the ailerons and cargo hatches.

  But a nasty problem cropped up regarding the rubberized canvas nacelles that held the hydrogen gas. A slimy white mildew grew persistently on the canvas and would eat it to shreds if left unchecked. To scour the fungus from the outsides of the nacelles was simple enough. But to clean the inner surfaces, where the mildew was worst, and where workers would be engulfed in an unbreathable atmosphere, presented difficulties. Mr. Spratt considered pumping the hydrogen to holding tanks and back again. But he was worried by the risk of leakage.

  He soon devised an ingenious and cost-effective solution. Boys from the nearby township were employed at half wages to enter the nacelles through makeshift airlocks, wearing loincloths and holding their breaths. These Balloon Boys scraped the canvas, sprayed it with fungicide, and resealed it, working for as long as they could manage before “surfacing” for air.

  Since the mildew kept returning, Mr. Spratt offered the boys long-term employment. They accepted, and like the pearl divers of Polynesia, they developed impressive powers of endurance in an airless environment. They also developed eye problems, ear problems, and throat problems, which had been more or less expected.

  Symptoms:

  What weren’t expected were the strange bluish blisters that irrupted all over the boys’ skins. Rather than water or blood, these blisters contained air. Or what seemed at first to be merely air.

  The longer a boy worked in the hydrogen, the larger his blisters grew, until he could work no longer. Hands blew up like inflated rubber gloves. Bellies swelled to unnatural dimensions. Cheeks, noses, buttocks, and thighs ballooned on the scrawny frames of the afflicted youths. Mr. Pratt established an infirmary compound and built an isolation ward for skin disorders, hoping that the damage was reversible.

  Dr. Woolsey Mahood, the Rice Consortium’s resident physician, deduced that the skin inflations were filled with organically generated hydrogen. This became apparent when one of the distended boys threw off his bedclothes and floated to the thatched roof. Eventually all of the ward’s patients had to be tied to their pallet beds. [1]

  Cures:

  Dr. Mahood tried everything he could think of—ice packs, bromate baths, cauterization . . . The disease progressed implacably. The puncture and deflation of the skin balloons provided symptomatic relief. But each squeezed balloon would grow back to its original size and then twice its original size in a matter of hours. The administration of holy oils by a Pongyi priest was equally futile.

  In 1931, during a rebellion of the Burmese peasantry against the Indian Congress at Delhi, Mr. Spratt’s hangars were destroyed by nocturnal arson. The explos
ion of the blimps showered the dockyards with flaming debris and ignited the wharves, the warehouses, and the infirmary compound.

  The Balloon Boys were last seen floating aloft, rising into a night sky filled with glowing red sparks. They were riding the blistering updraft from their burning skin ward.

  Reportedly they were laughing as they ascended.

  Submitted by

  Dr. Stepan Chapman, staff dermatologist, Waxwall County Free Clinic

  Endnote

  [1] Doctor Buckhead Mudthumper’s Encyclopedia of Forgotten Oriental Diseases, Wing Nut Speculum Press, London, 1941, Volume III, Bilharzia Through Cholera, page 913, “Blimp-Related Skin Growths: Conflicting Reports From Rangoon.”

  The dirigibles of Rangoon

  Title page of the 1953 edition. Originally known as the “Coronation” edition, it is now more popularly referred to as the “Ouija board” edition.

  THE FIFTIES

  1953: TUNING’S SPASM • FORMAT: HARDCOVER, 6 x 9

  PUBLISHER: CHATTO & WINDUS, LONDON, ENGLAND

  Dr. Lambshead, by his own admission, took a “wrong turn” into the world of the supernatural for a few years in the 1950s. As a result, several editions of the Guide included supernatural phenomenon unsupported by any empirical scientific findings. And, of all the diseases collected in the Guide’s infamous 1953 “Ouija board” edition, Tuning’s Spasm became the most notorious. Although Dr. Wilson later disowned the disease, saying it “had all been a dream, a nightmare, not based on fact at all,” a Dr. Tuning from Lubbock, Texas, not only disputed this assertion but sued Dr. Wilson for appropriating “my disease.” For several years, Dr. Tuning’s letters to the editor and public appearances cast doubt on the veracity of the Guide.

  Tuning’s Spasm