The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases

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BALLISTIC ORGAN SYNDROME
 
 
Ballistitis
 
 
Country of Origin
 
Java (Indonesia)
 
 
First Known Case
 
Ballistic Organ Syndrome, although rare, has been known since prehistoric times. In Australasia and Micronesia, cave paintings have been found depicting humans and animals with internal organs erupting from their bodies. (1)
 
 
Symptoms
 
Ballistic Organ Syndrome manifests as a sudden, explosive discharge of one or more bodily organs at high velocity; this exit may be accompanied by some pain. There are two known variants: subsonic Ballistitis, in which the velocity of ejection does not exceed that of sound, and distinguished by an explosive discharge from throat or anus accompanied by a release of wet, atomized bodily contents; and supersonic Ballistitis, in which the organ exits the body by the path of least resistance, breaking free directly through muscle, tendon, bone, and skin tissues.
 
Supersonic Ballistitis is the more dangerous manifestation, as the ejecta exceed the speed of sound and therefore strike without warning. Surprisingly, however, the high energy of supersonic Ballistitis discharge cauterizes the surface of the organ and sterilizes the ejected bodily contents, so that the overall risk of infection is less than that of subsonic Ballistitis.
 
In rare cases, the Ballistitis virus infects the patient's entire body. Eventually, some event causes one or more cells to rupture, after which the patient's body is disrupted in an explosive ejection of all bodily organs. This manifestation of the syndrome frequently occasions the death of the patient; at best, the loss of all bodily organs will cause considerable inconvenience and distress (as set out in Doctor Buckhead Mudthumper's Encyclopedia of Forgotten Oriental Diseases).
 
 
History
 
During the 1709 siege of Batavia (today Jakarta), the Sultan of Solo used Ballistitis-infected slaves as catapult ammunition, in hopes of injuring (and infecting) enough of the Dutch defenders to render their fortications untenable. Fortunately for the Dutch the governor of Batavia, Pieter van Tilberg, was familiar with Ballistitis from his service as a surgeon's assistant in Celebes (today Sulawesi). Van Tilberg ordered that infected citizens be expelled from the city; those infected individuals wreaked havoc among the besieging Javanese. Pieter van Tilberg later wrote an epic poem, "The Liver's Red Glare," in commemoration of the Dutch victory.
 
It is obvious from this account, however, that Ballistitis must have been endemic throughout the Indonesian Archipelago for years, if not centuries, prior to this event.
 
Randolph Johnson spent several months in the Indonesian Archipelago, searching for Ballistitis sufferers in hope of collecting case studies for his posthumously-published Confessions of a Disease Fiend, an autobiographical account of the tragic sexual obsession that culminated in his death. During sexual congress with a catamite in Mataram (Lombok, Indonesia), Johnson lost an arm to a supersonic Ballistitis discharge. Johnson was evacuated to Singapore aboard the Royal Navy frigate Indomitable, but died en route.
 
 
Cures
 
Ballistitis is known to be caused by a retrovirus that reprograms body cells to concentrate water at extremely high pressures. This buildup may continue for days or weeks, until one or more cells is ruptured and the pressure is released in a steam explosion. This initiates a chain reaction of other infected cells, causing one or more organs to be ejected with great force. The violence of supersonic Ballistitis is more likely to trigger adjacent cell detonation, and so a supersonic ejection is unlikely to be followed by subsequent ejections; subsonic Ballistitis eruptions, however, may continue until no organs remain in the body cavity. As reported in The Journals of Sarah Goodman, Disease Psychologist, both forms of the disorder occasion some distress on the part of the patient.
 
The Ballistitis retrovirus may be transmitted through direct contact with organic ejecta or through inhalation of atomized bodily contents. Medical personnel dealing with infected patients are strongly recommended to seek the advice of a military fortifications engineer to assist in deploying sandbagging and overhead protection, as ejected organs can travel a considerable distance and explode with some force on impact. When handling a patient at close quarters, respirator masks and ballistic body armor are strongly recommended as prophylaxis. Under no circumstances should a patient be immersed in water or any similarly incompressible fluid, placed in close proximity to load-bearing members of any structure, or surrounded by objects that might become lethal shrapnel in the event of an explosion.
 
In cases where one or a few organs have been ejected, organ transplantation is a useful means of restoring organic function; the surgeon should, however, ensure that all infected tissue has been excised. Unwary surgeons have worked for hours to save a patient's life, only to have the recently-implanted organ rejected in spectacular (and hazardous) fashion.
 
 
Submitted by
 
Dr. Michael Barry, Institute of Psychiatric Venereology, Hughes, Australian Capital Territory
 
 
Endnote
 
(1) "Explosive Ejection of Bodily Contents In Prehistoric Cave Art: A Medical Mystery Solved?" by James H. Twickenham, in Tropical Diseases Quarterly vol. 12.
 
 
Cross References
 
Buboparazygosia; Diseasemaker's Croup; Motile Snarcoma; Pentzler's Lubriciousness
 
 
 
 
BLOODFLOWER'S MELANCHOLIA
 
 
Country of Origin
 
England
 
 
First Known Case
 
The first and, in the opinion of some authorities, the only true case of Bloodflower's Melancholia appeared in Worcestershire, England, in the summer of 1813. The local doctor professed himself baffled by the symptoms of Squire Bloodflower's eldest son, Peter, then a youth of 18. "In all my many years as a physician," he wrote in his diary, only recently discovered, "I have never encountered such a puzzling and recalcitrant malady, whose origin must surely lie in the mysteries of the human soul."
 
Symptoms
 
"Since entering manhood the young Peter had manifested a distinguished gloom, which, on his achieving his majority, blossomed into a consummate mania. He shunned all active pursuits and dressed entirely in black. The sight of something as simple as sunshine or as innocent as a flower reduced him to tears of grief. He rejected normal sustenance, and exhibited a compulsion to drink ink and to eat paper. When these staples were put out of reach he began to consume his books; and on these being removed he retreated into a primitive and immobile state, akin to that of the embryo in the womb, from which he emerged only by God's grace and in his own good time." (From the diaries of Dr. Amos Smith, Worcester County Library)
 
 
History
 
Although Peter Bloodflower's is the first recorded case, there is reason to suspect a previous history of instability in the family (notably that of his aunt, Laetitia Bloodflower, who ended her days in a convent in Provence), which for reasons of social nicety had been carefully concealed. On recovering from his first attack, in the autumn of 1816, Peter went to London where he became part of the Romantic circle, mixing freely with such luminaries as Keats and Shelley, and, it is thought, making a considerable impression on their receptive minds. Keats' "Ode on Melancholy" is thought to have been addressed to him. It is likely, however, that Bloodflower's real interest lay with Keats' former roommate and fellow medical student, Henry Stephens, who may have developed his famous blue-black ink for the express purpose of satiating Bloodflower's secret thirst.
 
However, the true notability--and controversy--of Bloodflower's Melancholia lies in its hereditary character. According to the journals of Sarah Goodman, the distinguished disease psychologist, "no other disorder of the appetites and the emotions has manifested itself with such repeated exactness in successive generations of the same family." Nor, she might have added, amongst so wide a scattering of its members. Charcot's treatment of Justine Fleur-de-Sang at the Salpetriere in 1865, and Freud's encounter with Hans Blutblum in Vienna in 1926, bear witness to the familial tenacity of the condition. Not to mention the direct descendants of Peter Bloodflower, resident in Worcestershire until this very day. Each one has exhibited the same ink-drinking and paper-eating tendencies, combined with extreme Weltschmerz, "as if," in the words of Dr. Smith, "the weight of nature were too great for his fragile spirit to endure."
 
There are, however, those who dispute the existence of Bloodflower's Melancholia in its hereditary form. Randolph Johnson is unequivocal on the subject. "There is no such thing as Bloodflower's Melancholia," he writes in Confessions of a Disease Fiend. "All cases subsequent to the original are in dispute, and even where records are complete, there is no conclusive proof of heredity. If anything we have here a case of inherited suggestibility. In my view, these cannot be regarded as cases of Bloodflower's Melancholia, but more properly as Bloodflower's Melancholia by Proxy."
 
If Johnson's conclusions are correct, we must regard Peter Bloodflower as the sole true sufferer from this distressing condition, a lonely status that possesses its own melancholy aptness.
 
Outcome and Cures
 
This type of melancholia does not generally prove fatal. Peter Bloodflower, despite recurrent episodes, lived a long and fecund life. Only two cases of possible suicide in the Bloodflower family have occurred: that of Arthur Bloodflower, who died in 1892 of ink poisoning (his favored brand contained high quantities of vitriol) and that of Horatio Bloodflower, who according to legend drowned in his own tears.
 
There is probably no cure for Bloodflower's Melancholia, or, for that matter, for Bloodflower's Melancholia by Proxy. Peter Bloodflower was, of course, subjected to the sole treatment available in his time: "I bled him six ounces," writes Smith, "and found his blood to be as black as ink." Freud found it non-amenable to psychoanalysis. "A grief whose sources lie in the very wellsprings of existence," he wrote, "may never, I fear, be truly capable of cure." Modern advances in genetics may yet hold the key to its eradication, or prove, at least, its claim to join the ranks of genuine hereditary diseases.
 
 
Submitted by
 
Dr. Tamar Yellin
 
 
Cross References
 
Diseasemaker's Croup; Menard's Disease; Monochromitis; Poetic Lassitude; Rashid's Syndrome
 
 
 
 
BONE LEPROSY
 
 
Turkish Bone Leprosy,
or Saint Calamaro's Leprosy
 
 
Introduction
 
Hansen's disease, commonly known as leprosy, is a long-acting microbial infection. Its lengthy dormancy period has created confusion regarding its modes of transmission. However, the active organism, Mycobacterium leprae, has been isolated, and many modern cases can be reversed by antibiotics. In medieval Turkey, things were very different.
 
 
History
 
In the Christian year 1510, Bayezid the Second ruled the Ottoman Empire. On the shores of the Black Sea, at the mouth of the Sakarya River, there was a colony for lepers called Saint Augustine's Retreat. The lepers grew barley and made goat cheese. Their needs for commerce with the outside world were met by an adjacent community, the Franciscan monks of The Order of Saint Augustine, who maintained the leprosarium.
 
Throughout the existence of the colony, it attracted a steady stream of pilgrim lepers, who walked there from as far away as Greece and Persia. In roughly 1520 a new form of Hansen's disease appeared among the pilgrims. The Franciscans called it bone leprosy.
 
 
Symptoms
 
The basic distinction here is easy to grasp. The hallmark symptom of normal leprosy is that necrotic flesh falls from the bones of the extremities. In bone leprosy, the bones of the extremities fall from the flesh.
 
 
First the blackened bones of the fingers and toes would poke themselves bloodlessly through the skin and detach. Next the metacarpals and metatarsals disassembled themselves and emigrated. At this stage the victim could still walk on his ankles with the help of crutches. But then the long bones of the four limbs would emerge into the light of day and discard themselves.
 
The chronicle of Father Ambrosius, the last abbot of The Order of Saint Augustine, reports that one bone leper also lost his pelvis, scapulars, and clavicles, and got along with only a skull, a spine, and some ribs. This man called himself Vecchio Calamaro, "the old squid." He may have been born in Italy.
 
 
Further History
 
By 1530 many bone lepers could be seen among the hovels of the colony, squirming across the earth like giant sea stars. But the "Normal Lepers" distrusted "the Boneless Ones" and finally attacked them with clubs and drove them from the colony.
 
The Boneless Ones slithered away and formed their own settlement on a barren plateau that overlooked the monastery, the leprosarium, and the river. They drew water from a mountain stream and grew vegetables and spices. At the instruction of Father Ambrosius, the monks brought them barley and milk on the sly. An uneasy truce ensued between the two leper colonies.
 
In 1534, during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, Old Calamaro experienced a religious epiphany. He communicated this vision to his fellow pariahs with such force that they reorganized themselves as a lay brotherhood. They committed their lives to penance, holy poverty, and the contemplation of Christ's mercies. Calamaro went to live in a pit lined with stones, like a shallow well shaft or a lidless oubliette. He dug this pit himself, using only his teeth and a wooden spoon.
 
As the years progressed, more and more of the Boneless took vows and became visionary hermits, living in the sunken circular cells that dotted the plateau. They seldom spoke, but their echoing chants at dawn and dusk could be heard by Father Ambrosius at Saint Augustine's. Certainly the Boneless Ones had surpassed the Franciscans in their pursuit of austerity. Ambrosius felt no temptation to envy them their accomplishment. (1)
 
The only existing record of The Order of Saint Augustine and the two leprosariums concludes with the death of Ambrosius. The monastery walls have been toppled by earthquakes.
 
But Old Calamaro is remembered to this day as Saint Calamaro of the Russian Orthodox Church. A few of the "prayer pits" of his brotherhood have been preserved for visitation near the modern town of Karasu.
 
 
Hagiography
&n...