Fictional diseases

My exercise book for the second half of Grade Four (written when I was nine) contained a glossary. Being unfamiliar with the word “glossary”, I called it “The Helper of understanding the story’s in this book Dictionary“.

Most of the entries were diseases. Fictional diseases, that I’d made up. This would have been around the same age that I asked Uncle Rodney (a doctor) to identify the worst disease he’d ever heard of (he nominated several, but I don’t recall which). A child’s imagination is not constrained by adult sensibilities.

Here are some examples: