What ails you?…
As age continues its colonizing of one’s body, one is rarely without a complaint of some sort or another. So perhaps one can take consolation from Listverse’s Top 10 Bizarre Illnesses… at least one doesn’t have, for instance:
Cutlery Craving
The desire to eat metal objects is comparatively common. Occasionally there is an extreme case, such as that of 47 year old Englishman Allison Johnson. An alcoholic burglar with a compulsion to eat silverware, Johnson has had 30 operations to remove strange things from his stomach. In 1992, he had eight forks and the metal sections of a mop head lodged in his body. He has been repeatedly jailed and then released, each time going immediately to a restaurant and ordering lavishly. Unable to pay, he would then tell the owner to call the police, and eat cutlery until they arrived. Johnson’s lawyer said of his client, “He finds it hard to eat and obviously has difficulty going to the lavatory.”
All ten, each with links to further info on each, here.
(And further to the recent post on GiantURL, readers might consider the alternative, DickensURL, via which your correspondent’s modest http://www.LawrenceWilkinson.com becomes:
http://dickensurl.com/90f3/Under_an_accumulation_of_staggerers_no_man_can_be_considered_a_free_agent_No_man_knocks_himself_down_if_his_destiny_knocks_him_down_his_destiny_must_pick_him_up_again
… from The Old Curiosity Shop, as it happens)
As we fend off “medical student syndrome,” we might recall that on this date in 1824 Beethoven’s Ninth (and final) Symphony, Chorale, premiered in Vienna, with “lyrics” by Frederich Schiller (part of his “Ode to Joy”); Beethoven’s chorus concludes:
Be embraced, ye millions!
This kiss for the whole world!
Brothers, beyond the star-canopy
Must a loving Father dwell.
Be embraced,
This kiss for the whole world!
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods,
Daughter of Elysium,
Joy, beautiful spark of the gods!
