Self Certificate of Sickness

Sickness hits most of us at some time in our lives and unknown sickness can be especially frightening.  However, a diagnosis that eludes doctors today could very well be routine in the future.  Epstein-Barr syndrome, for example, puzzled physicians for decades until research identified the symptoms and developed treatment for it. 

Industrial sickness has become a problem of many countries, particularly India.  It’s estimated that the city of Mumbai loses over twenty million working days per year due to pollution by industry.  This is the type of sickness India is trying to combat and they have made a bit of progress.  There used to be many sicknesses of unknown origin in that country until modern medicine began to discover how pollutants in the air, water and food could make a person ill and even cause death.

In many workplaces, not only do you suffer while you are ill but afterwards have to comply with requirements for a sickness certificate.  By having a physician complete a sickness certificate, the company is assured that you had a legitimate absence.  Many employers, realizing that not everyone can afford medical care, will accept a self certificate of sickness which the employee themselves complete and submit. 

Unknown sickness is more common than most of us know.  One particular outbreak of African unknown sickness in 1962 still has scientists scratching their heads.  A teenaged girl in a boarding school in Kashasha began to laugh  for no apparent reason, much to the dismay of her teacher.  Other girls joined in, alternating with fierce crying jags, until the entire school had to be closed and the students sent home.  The symptoms actually spread, disrupting some villages for as much as six months!  Despite intense investigation, the cause of that small epidemic remains a mystery to this day.

Other forms of illness are easier to recognize and name, such as dreaded radiation sickness that afflicted many laboratory workers before preventative measures were found.  Marie Curie’s daughter, Irene, was probably the first human casualty of radiation poisoning, exposed while helping in her mother’s lab after the discovery of Polonium.  She died of leukemia at age 59, induced by exposure to the element.  Precautions taken today make this sort of incident very rare and the only recent deaths from radiation were deliberately inflicted.  Many remember the infamous “spy poisoning” of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in the United Kingdom in 2007.  Very rarely do people of this era die of radiation sickness.

There are many other mysterious illnesses that continue to confound the medical community.  No one really knows a specific cause or trigger for the many forms of cancer that afflicts people, nor the many tragic cases of autism that afflict so many of our children.  Some theorize that autism is caused by an ingredient in childhood vaccinations and others think there may be a genetic tendency aggravated by environmental factors or pollution.  Hopefully, with time and research, we’ll one day find the causes and the cures for these unknown sicknesses.