Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 123

Coxsackie B

Commonly known as Devil’s grip or Bornholm disease (A Danish Island where the most famous cases were documented).

The disease is characterised by attacks of severe pain in the lower chest, often on one side.Thus making it difficult to breath like you have an “iron grip” around your chest. Symptoms usually last about a week

Dr William C Dabney (1849-1894) recorded 29 cases of pleurodynia during an epidemic in 1888. His colleague Dr William Francis Cooper (1855-1934) in Rapahannock County recounted to him the local name for the epidemic affliction as ‘the devils grip‘

• Dabney WC. Account of an Epidemic Resembling Dengue Which Occurred in and Around Charlottesville and the University of Virginia in June, 1888, American Journal of the Medical Sciences. 1888; 96: 488-494
• Spencer FJ. The Devil and William Dabney. An Epidemiological Postscript. JAMA. 1966 Feb 1;195(8):645-8

Fear of Friday the 13th.

You could have also had paraskavedekatriaphobia or paraskevidekatriaphobia for the same fear.

Road Traffic Collision.

A study in the BMJ, published in 1993, concluded that there:

…is a significant level of traffic-related incidences on Friday the 13th as opposed to a random day, such as Friday the 6th, in the UK.

However, the Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics (CVS) on 12 June 2008 stated that:

fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays, because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home.

Fear of clowns (not just restricted to the evil ones)

Harry Houdini

Houdini died on the 31st of October 1926 of a ruptured appendix.

The injury was reportedly caused on October 20 by J. Gordon Whitehead, a student at McGill University in Canada, who hit Houdini in the abdomen several times to test his claim that he could withstand being hit anywhere above the waist without being hurt. [Reference]