Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, January 3, 1994                   TAG: 9401050182
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SEEMS LIKE THEY'D SOON RUN OUT OF DISEASES

What other economic system would produce what appears to be a Disease of the Month Club?

Like medicine itself, it's complicated. But just let me explain that I got this mailing that said I'd get a free gift worth $29.95 if there were a silver stamp included. Also, a thing we all yearn for - a free prescription-drug guide - if there also was a gold stamp.

There they were - the silver and gold stamps. This entitled me to 24 cards with diseases all over them, a three-ring notebook to keep them in and 20 Quick Divider Cards - whatever they are.

After you get all of these really great gifts in the mail - along with 12 other ailment cards for $1.99 - you get 12 new cards every three weeks for $3.99 plus handling.

This means that you can get 12 new diseases every three weeks, which causes me to wonder whether we won't run out of diseases sooner or later.

This is a class act here, boys. They sent along some sample cards for free. They make interesting reading during an ice storm or other disaster.

I was taken particularly with the card showing fractures of the neck and spine. It is illustrated with a picture of as woman lying at the bottom of a flight of carpeted stairs.

She seems calm. She is even smiling while a man we assume to be her husband immobilizes her head and body.

And there is that all-time favorite: The middle ear infection, also known to physicians, nurses and English majors who minored in biology as otitis media.

Another really fun card gets into periodontal disease - which makes you floss whether you want to or not.

There is a card on angina, which usually means you are on your way out when you get it. There is another card on that ailment that makes all men, women and mammals equal - a little drumroll, please - cystitis. With diagrams.

I don't doubt that the sellers if these cards have their hearts in the right place - ideally without angina - and that they believe an informed America is a healthy America.

But there are weak-willed, half-witted persons such as yours truly here who get all of the symptoms they read about.

For example, I have to stop now because I have this major pain in my chest.