The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases
The doctor, a large, hulking fellow with fingers more like the digits of some great ape and a persistent cough -- brought about, he'd informed me, by a leech-gathering mission assayed -- or braved! -- in the darker region of night but two weeks previous -- frowned as he relayed his diagnosis.
"..."But, doctor," I parried, "this Guide is a veritable omnium-gatherum of obscure maladies. Why, there are complete and scholarly..."
Oct. 24, 2003 Books Review by Wayne Alan Brenner