Capitalised Communicable Conditions

 Things you could get, in the past: The Screaming Abdabs, The Heebie Jeebies, The Willies, The Collywobbles (although strictly speaking, The Willies were something someone gave you, rather than something you'd got).

The Bristled Cadaver

John Osborne, writing of George Devine, theatrical manager & director: "After the nightly satisfaction of outfacing The Chairs audience, there was the beginning of his adventure with Samuel Beckett. If Ionesco's discordant willfulness intrigued him, Beckett's temperament inspired him with almost apostolic awe. Even the peremptory sourness of Brecht couldn't match the incomparably bleached bone of Beckett and his liturgical 'toneless voice'.

Uncle Sam had the monstrous good fortune of actually looking like one of his own plays, a graven icon of his own texts. The bristled cadaver and mountain-peak stare were the ultimate purifier that deified all endeavour, pity or hope.

 If the head of a Balzac or Ionesco or a dozen other sybaritically fleshed-out masters had been put onto the Irishman's torso, the response to the purity of that 'toneless voice' might not have been so immediate.                                                                               Furthermore, for George, he had the impeccable credentials of French cultural hauteur." 

Almost a Gentleman, An Autobiography Volume II, Faber and Faber, London, 1991