My venerable and much thumbed copy of Black’s Medical Dictionary, by the estimable and ever unflappable William A. R. Thomson, M.D.—Adam & Charles Black, London, thirtieth edition, with 441 black-and-white, or grey-and-greyer, illustrations and four colour plates which never fail to freeze the cockles of my heart—informs me that rosacea, a nice name for an unpleasant complaint, is due to a chronic congestion of the flush areas of the face and forehead, leading to the formation of red papules; the resultant erythema, the name we medical men give to redness of the skin, tends to wax and wane but ultimately becomes permanent, and may, the candid Doctor warns, be accompanied by gross enlargement of the sebaceous glands (see SKIN), leading to the gross enlargement of the nose known as rhinophyma (qv) or grog blossoms. The repetition there—gross enlargement … gross enlargement—is an uncharacteristic infelicity in Dr. Thomson’s usually euphonious if somewhat antiquated prose style. I wonder if he does house calls. He would be bound to have a calming bedside manner and a fund of information on all sorts of topics, not all of them health-related. Medical men are more versatile than they are given credit for. Roget of Roget’s Thesaurus was a physician, did important research on consumption and laughing gas, and no doubt cured the odd patient, into the bargain. But grog blossoms, now, that is something to look forward to.

—John Banville
—from The Sea