Bedlington terriers often build up copper in their tissues, a conditions identical to the rare human malady known as Wilson's disease.

Some of his sacred dust (says he) will be of use to me in removing diseases; for the dead, when converted into medicine, will expel human maladies, and ashes prevail against ashes.

Without the help of such laboratory animals, we'd never be able to develop new cures for old and new human maladies.

In fact, numerous observations made upon fevers, somnambulisms, and other human maladies, seem to prove that the moon does exercise some mysterious influence upon man.

"Paul Morris is infected with the most demanding of human maladies," Goodness murmured, saddened to speak the words aloud.

"If this is confirmed," he wrote, "we can hope for the most important consequences, even in human maladies."

That's not unusual with some of these human maladies.

Oliver Sacks, who has written on the neurological causes of various human maladies, was an "Honorary Signatory," even though he said he considers Freud "to be a genius and a hero."

Brucellosis is not related to mad cow disease, which scientists in Britain have tentatively linked to a human malady that has caused eight deaths.

I put aside Baricco's novel "Ocean Sea" because it turned out to be what the publisher's blurb said it was: a "postmodern fable of the human malady."