"May they name a disease after you!"

There's a great Yiddish curse which runs, "May you become famous, so famous they name a disease after you!" (See, for example, references here and here.) But once upon a time I actually contemplated this for Wife. 

As you know, Wife was diagnosed years ago with systemic lupus. Lupus is an autoimmune disorder where the body's immune system overreacts to simple, normal stimuli and ends up attacking healthy tissue. But think for a minute how exactly this description mirrors Wife's temperament, as she chronically overreacts to minor setbacks or random bad luck with outrage and fury, as if the Universe were out to get her, personally. There were years where I thought, "If only we could document this correlation and submit it to a journal somewhere, Wife could be immortalized by having the syndrome named after her!"

Turns out other people have had the idea that there might be a connection between personality and disease. In a recent blog post, John Michael Greer explains that Eliphas Lévi wrote "Most physical maladies derive from moral maladies, according to the unique and universal magical doctrine and due to the law of analogies." (The Doctrine and Ritual of High Magic, chapter 20) And on his other blog, Greer has written that when he worked in nursing homes, experienced aides could identify what disease a patient suffered from simply by the patient's personality type, without ever looking at the chart:

• The heart-attack personality is "the famous Type A personality."
• "The cancer personality represses his or her emotional life, takes on extra responsibilities, and is constantly worried about not being good enough."
• "The diabetic personality is self-indulgent in a particular way, and -- yes, I know, it sounds like a pun -- rather sweet."
• "The multiple sclerosis personality is the kind that will ring the call bell fifteen times in an eight hour shift because the patient wants you to adjust the position of some little item on the nightstand, which the patient could adjust herself. It's weakness and constant requests for help as a means of feeling in control."

So maybe there's a "lupus personality." Maybe I can get someone to name it after Wife.