O: Ochlesis & oinomancy: a witness statement about strange symptoms
Ochlesis (noun): sickness resulting from overcrowded living conditions
Oinomancy (noun) divination using wine
The following witness statement seems to have submitted as part of some kind of trial.
”I was first summoned to the edge of the Potter’s neighbourhood five months and two weeks ago. The first patient had collapsed on the street (male, age 29, worked as a plaster and part-time actor) and was brought to a hospital. Upon examination and interviewing the patient, I found very few things in his lifestyle that could cause such a collapse, even though he clearly partook in more wine than recommended on a weekly basis. He mentioned that his housemates had been sick and had stayed home, but that he had to go to work. I made a note of his employer* and put on a cloth mask and disposable clothes before going to his house, where I found six women and three men, all with the same symptoms. They were sleeping in bunk beds, had no access to running water and only had space to keep and change their clothes in a small attic upstairs more or less only consisting of a closet. The only other inventory was a small kitchen with no room for cooking and eating at the same time and barely the space to cook for four people. The smell of sweat and bile was fairly rank, but it was outmatched by the smell of old beer and leftover wine. The patients inside were also suffering from the same symptoms as their housemate.
They were the following: High fever and following from that dehydration, in part also from the patients’ level of alcohol consumption, also above the recommended levels. The skin took on a slightly yellowish tone, often with visible veins. The eyes had paled, but with a purple tone and exceptionally constricted pupils.
I isolated the patients in the nearby hospital and personally supervised of their care. I found similar patients in other parts of of the neighbourhood and other poor parts of the Jubylon, had the patients committed and made a note of the landlords.*
What also happened was that they started having attacks or fits of a sort, where they would ramble or scream of things to come. I made sure to note everything they said (for a later psychiatric evaluation), which was all suggestions of things to come. Out of purely academic/scientific interest (and because my partner was out of town), I tested their predictions, including going to a warehouse that the original patient had said would collapse. It had not, but it was on verge of doing so, so I made a note of it* as well. All in all, 72% of the predictions either came true or seemed to have some basis in fact. The patients all recovered, could remember their fits, but could not name the reasons or where their predictions had come from. It also earned me a fair earning from investing in a few stocks of companies that the patients had mentioned (all in the name of science of course). “
* : ”Making a note” was an idiomatic expression in the iatrarchic government of the free City of Jubylon. It means reporting someone for intentionally endangering the health of others, in this case asking someone to come into work while sick or having unnecessarily hurtful working or living conditions. It was a crime harshly punished by the authorities, possibly resulting in the confiscation of all of the the defendant’s property, if they found guilty in a court of law.