The Great Perhaps [antikvár]

One Anything resembling a cloud will cause Jona-than Casper to faint. Jonathan, a quiet, middle-aged professor, suffers from an odd form of epilepsy; seeing the shape of a cloud—a cumulus, its appearance like a magnolia tree in bloom, a stratus, as bleary as a pigeon starded to flight, or a cirrus, with its vague, ghostlike veil—and he will immediately collapse, his heart beating irregularly in perfect terror, his breath slowing to a whisper, his arms and legs going weak. These symptoms may only last for a few moments or up to several hours, depending on a number of unknowable factors, such as the size of the cloud, its color, and its height. The cause of Jonathan's disorder—first documented in a 1961 article in the New EnglandJournal of Medicine entitied "The Boy Who Feared the Sky"—was thought to be hereditary in nature, as other, distant relations had been beset by similarly strange defects. Jonathan's condition was later named as its own neurological disease, Casper-Cerebrovascularitis, when he was eight. The medical community marveled at the shocking, undeniable effects which could be duplicated whenever a doctor, medical stu-