This is a fun, weird book. A collaborative book where different writers submitted imaginary diseases fro a medical guide coordinated by the fictitious and mysterious Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead. It is however more interesting as an idea than as an actual book to read.

Some of the diseases are really cool, and they all have an usually fun description relating the symptoms, the first known case, the history of the disease and possible cures. The illustrations are also suitably weird. Some of my favourite diseases in the book:

-Ebercitas: an intense infatuation with Eber M. Soler, a lady living in Cordoba, Argentina.
-Internalized Tatooing disease: elaborate artworks psychosomatically imprinted in internal organs.
-Logopetria: words spoken by the patient are physical objects
-Rashid's syndrome (Fictonecrosis, popularly "Bibliophagia"): self-explanatory
-Motile Snarcoma (Motile agglutinate snarcoma of the subperineal pondus): see below
and quite ominously,
-The Wuhan Flu: entropic disordering of the body's atoms cause by pronouncing an unknown set of words

Two things however diminished my enjoyment of the book:
-Because the disease are devised by writers many of them deal with symptoms relating to words, books, paper.. etc and they can become repetitive.
-The second part of the book, that consists of fragments of the "guide" through history as well of stories about Dr. Lambshead, has a couple of good stories but mostly it's a bit too long and just drags. Most of it (because the writers are pretending to be doctors, and pretending the guide is real) feels like a private joke that the reader is not a participant in.

Overall, I believe the book is to be read sporadically and not in one sitting in order enjoy it better. And if you read only the first half that's the description of the diseases and avoid the second part, you really don't miss much.

Music for this book:
Anatomy Theater - David Lang

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"Your snarcoma may turn out to be a motile snarcoma. A motile snarcoma exhibits mobility under stress. In layman's terms, it can crawl. I fact, it will stretch out its fiibrous micelia like tentacles and drag itself around your patient's guts like a bleached baby octopus on Benzedrine"

"Thackery Trajan Lambshead was born on St. Genesius the Comedian's Day (August 25th), 1900, in Wimpering on the Brink, Devon (county), England".

"May it continue to thrive for another eighty-three editions".