I’ve been sicker than a used rubber after a Charlie Sheen slumber party the last couple of days. Thankfully I live in America, where we have the best healthcare in the world. In fact, it’s so goddamn great that me and half the country can’t afford it. I’ve spent the last three days wrapped in blankets and getting regular shots of whiskeycillin. I was kicking myself for being a pussy and not going to work until I saw on the news that Texas is in the middle of a flu epidemic and 18 people have died so far. Don’t let that scare you into getting your children the flu vaccine, though. I’d hate for their tiny, lifeless bodies, to catch autism. I mean, there’s never been one single shred of evidence that they will, but it could happen. Meanwhile, the fucking dog’s shots are all up to date. I’ll wait for more data before I decide to vaccinate my kids but I’m not taking any chances with Mr. Sprinkles.

Here are some fun facts about diseases to get you through your week.

The opossum. Your friend and protector.

Bloodsucking parasites are great at spreading diseases. One such menace is the tick, whose favorite disease to spread is Lyme disease. Symptoms of Lyme disease are headaches, joint pain, insomnia, weakness, bladder problems, fibromyalgia, vertigo, back pain…the list goes on. Basically it makes the rest of your life suck worse than the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movies. Thankfully opossums are out there in the night, eating thousands of ticks a week. So next time you see one of those ugly motherfuckers on your back porch, don’t shoot it.

Smallpox

If you are unfortunate enough to contract smallpox you can look forward to your body being covered in leaking, scabby pustules, inside and out. There’s about a 30% chance you are going to die, unless you are a baby or elderly, in which case you are completely fucked. You’ll be in so much pain you’ll be begging for death, which thankfully comes in 6-10 days.

Supposedly, British and U.S. militaries would hand out smallpox-infested blankets to Native Americans back in the colonial days to commit genocide and clear out the land for whitey to take over. Historians debate over whether this actually happened (It did), but there is no denying the fact that millions of Native Americans did die because of the disease, regardless of how they got it.

The good news is that you don’t have to worry about smallpox. The World Health Organization declared smallpox to have been completely eradicated in 1980, thanks to vaccines.

Ignaz Semmelweis

You might not have ever heard the name Ignaz Semmelweis but you’re probably alive today because of him. Ignaz was a physician in Hungary who noticed women who had babies delivered by students coming from the cadaver labs had a tendency to die a lot more than the ones over in the midwife section of the hospital. He deduced the students were bringing something from the dead bodies and infecting the mothers. He made everyone start washing their damn hands and suddenly women started dying during childbirth a whole lot less. He published his findings and was laughed out of the medical community. He spent the next twenty years frantically trying to convince people he was right, leading to everyone (including his wife) to assume he’d lost his goddamn mind. In 1865 he was sent to an insane asylum, where he died two weeks later after getting his ass whooped by the guards. Years after his death, Louis Pasteur developed Germ Theory and suggested Semmelweis might have been on to something.

Scurvy

Scurvy is a condition caused by lack of vitamin C. Symptoms include having your teeth fall out, jaundice, fever, neuropathy, and eventual death. Sailors had a bad habit of dying from scurvy while being out on the high seas for months on end, and by bad habit, I mean millions of them; to the point where scurvy became known as “the sailor’s disease.” In 1601 Captain James Lancaster noticed the ships in his fleet that sailed around in places where they picked up lemons at port died of scurvy 100% less than his other ships. The British Empire took this discovery and started making all their sailors drink lemon juice, giving them a distinct advantage over other navies, by not dying for no reason.

Due to advances in technology that made sea travel faster, people started getting where they were going quicker and didn’t die of scurvy even if they didn’t have any lemons. Sailors started thinking they didn’t really need lemons. Then around 1860 they switched from expensive Mediterranean lemons to cheaper West Indian limes, which had jack shit for vitamin C. The cure for scurvy was forgotten, ushering in a new era of motherfuckers dying terrible deaths until Elmer McCollum re-discovered the anti-scurvy properties of Vitamin C by doing experiments on Guiney Pigs…somehow…in 1917.

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