Illnesses, Medicine, Doctors. (Taken from The Raw Nerve : a book of Ills, by Dr Rosebud McCrea.) " The following are the principal illnesses known in Umbagollah: The Illness of Chair. The Disease of Envy. The Virus named Charity. The occasion known as Death. Of these, none are incurable. Chair may be cured by powerful thoughts. A cure for Envy may be found in the ingestion of the potions of skilled potion makers such as those who live in Wrinkle. If, on an auspicious day, a caring mother scratches her child and places a drop of Charity in the bleeding wound, then the disease will not afflict the child in its adulthood. The assistance of Feeling Doctors, Smelling Doctors and Hearing Doctors may also serve to save lives. In all cases of illness, I would recommend that you summon a doctor or seek out a practiced creator of herb stews and not subject yourself or your beloveds to the poultices and cures of casual street vendors. Their 'remedies' are likely to stir up another illness to join the first. Remember that these people sail a tide of sickness to make their living, fishing for the ill as a child fishes for Swans to eat. They have nothing to gain from your good health, and everything to gain from your incapacitation. Finally, Death which is feared needlessly by many, may be cured if the sufferer can be coaxed into a fit of coughing. This cure is only effective after the patient is afflicted with the illness. If indulged in before the onset of Death then the cough will have no recuperative power and indeed may hasten the arrival of Death. Some doctors swear on the magic of a loud sneeze. I do not contradict them. I have asked my good friend Doctor Ester Palm to describe the three different types of doctor: Sniffing Doctors. Sniffing doctors, and most other Umbagollians, believe that illnesses remind the body of its mortality. The body realises that it is not a unique and important consciousness, but a decaying piece of meat. Shocked by this insight, it begins to subtly decompose. By smelling the air around a person, a good sniffing doctor can determine, first, if any decomposition is occurring (in other words, if the person is really sick), and secondly, the nature of the illness. The doctor then refines her diagnosis by smelling the sick person's breath, armpits, feet, farts, groin, ears and hands. In addition to normal medical treatment, a Sniffing Doctor will prescribe a number of fresh-smelling pomanders which the patient carries around in small bags pressed against their skin. If an decomposing body is reminded of healthy scents then it will be able to heal itself rapidly. If that doesn't work, then the doctor tries the opposite trick of exposing the patient to evil-smelling people and hopes that the sick body will revolt against this unpleasentness and become healthy-smelling out of sheer disgust. Feeling Doctors Feeling doctors are usually delicate, attentuate, thin; always trembling slightly and enormously sensitive. They are also frequently blind. The best Feeling Doctors do not even have to touch a person to know what is wrong with them. All they do is hold their fingertips or the end of their nose a few centimetres away from the skin and they will feel the sickness quivering. "That's a chest cold," they'll say, or, "You have leukemia." The less serious the illness is, the sharper and more rapid the vibration it will give off as it sprints through the patient's system, making the bloodstream ring. Something more severe will set off a low repititious boom, like the vibrations of a large bell wrapped in felt. Hearing Doctors. Hearing doctors use their ears rather than their fingers, but they hear the same ringing and booming that the Feeling Doctors senses. They are more precise than Feeling Doctors, but also more expensive. Their prescriptions tend to revolve around hiring a small chamber orchestra to establish itself in the patient's house and play sweet music day and night for several weeks. This infuses the sufferer's body with healthy rhythmns in much the same way that a pomander reminds the Smelling Doctor's patient what it is to smell good, but it costs more than most people can afford. The largest single group of doctors lives in the Exian Tower of Foot..."