ERIC ELSHTAIN
Excerpts from FRAGMENTS FROM AN UBARIAN HANDBOOK OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Edited and translated from the Ubarian by René Dàhumé. Paris: Lapeste: 1967
Edited and translated from the French by Eric Elshtain


Fragment One

“Are there signs of the coming of curving fever?”

Living or sleeping in caves is, though sometimes this does not indicate the future onset of curving fever.a A futile groping of the hands as the facts permit is no antecedent cause, but will often occur after fever has set upon the index finger. And let us not take as established that a great many people are specifically affected by curving fever at a particular festival, like the jelly-fish bloom or any other. We can draw no conclusion. Wakefulness(?) Heaviness(?) Giddiness(?) In refutation of these so-called indicator emotions, the followers of Niatpu argue as follows: “How to stand within a shark’s visual acuity and not feel it? The event will certainly be colored with the remembrance of extinct grasses, and will be feverishly secreted away in a diary and every known object will be infected with fever like howling new planets, like crows over the moon.” A wound of the hand, we say, is a sure sign, a probable sign, not inevitable...

Someone who is slipping into the disease will:
Blink frequently (at)           a plucking at hairs (is)         weak and prone.           ...add foods of the middle class.

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