TO-WIT: NAMING RITES
“What, you got Alzheimer’s,” my secretary of thirty five years joshed at me when for the third time that morning I called her into my office to dictate the same letter.
“Well, if I do, missy, the next thing I’m gonna forget is your paycheck,” I retorted. Now usually my rapier-like wit comforts me but this time I felt uneasy, in part because she’d raised the always- haunting-at-my-age specter of Alzheimer’s and in part because I only call her “missy” when I can’t remember her given name.
There actually was an Alzheimer. His name was Alois Alzheimer and he was a neuropathologist who in 1906 first diagnosed presenile dementia, the dreaded disorder that now bears his name and drives so many poor demented souls to behave like judges. I’m guessing his offspring feel a curious admixture of glory and grief to have inherited a perpetually repugnant familial fame – we all remember how the conflict almost killed poor little Billy Hitler - but they are not alone. When it comes to eponymous disorders, Alois shares the podium with many others. There’s Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Hartnup’s Disease, Mortimer’s Disease and Christmas Disease, just to name a few.
The law is similarly sprinkled with eponymic disorders. True, they’ve never attained the popularity enjoyed by fatal diseases, but they can be almost as devastating. When it comes to the ruination of lives, our profession doesn’t have to take a back seat to anyone and that’s a legacy we can always be proud of. Consider the following:
PANDER’S DIGRESSION – named for Ebenezer Pander, a divorce lawyer in whom the malady was first diagnosed in 1911. It appears to strike primarily at family law practitioners and is identified by severe callusing of the brain’s temporal lobes caused by excessive exposure to the word “bastard.” A positive diagnosis cannot be confirmed without removal and dissection of the affected tissue, a procedure which fortunately interferes not at all with the patient’s future earning capacity. Epidemiologically related to Goniff’s Disarray, a syndrome primarily affecting those in long term marriages.
FUDD’S MIASMA – an exceedingly rare condition named for Bertha Fudd, a legal secretary psychologically unable to accept the demise of her forty year employer. She cut her hair, donned his three piece suits and continued by impersonation to represent the same clients, telling all of them that “my” very public funeral was nothing more than the misdiagnosis of a severe head cold. Her flawless artifice might have gone undiagnosed for years but for her propensity to treat magistrate judges with respect.
LULU (The I Won’t Iron Lady) GEHRIG’S DISEASE – Named for a prominent criminal lawyer who after many years of stellar trial defense work developed an intense and chronic fear of courtrooms. She thereafter pled her clients guilty in 2130 straight prosecutions, a record thought to be unassailable until broken by DePetrie Dish, the famous dyslexic white collar crimes specialist.
WISENHEIMER’S DISEASE – a chronic but fetching disorder characterized by a compulsive need to mock, ridicule, humiliate and make light of the legal profession with wit, style, brilliance and a positively scintillescent vocabulary.
©2011, S. Sponte, Esq.