What Should I name this fictional Disease/Disorder?

Question

So I'm writing this fictional novel with this character that his this disease. the only problem is that I have no idea what to call this disease. So the disease is a non communicable one that affects the blood of those who contract it. What this disease does is alter your blood cell in a way that involuntarily makes them produce more blood than needed and destabilizes the blood to the point where it becomes hot or in some rare cases starts boiling. 
People affected by this disease would have to endure great amounts of pain through out their body, especially in their heart due to their boiling blood. 
Signs of having this disease are having your hair turn snow white and sores along your arms, heart burn and fluctuating body temperatures. I haven't figured out how you contract the disease as of yet.

Belliger · Answer

Hello,

Boiling blood sounds exciting, especially semi-spontaneous boiling, but in my humble opinion this symptom is probably outwith both real medicine and the laws of physics.

You can get really high core temperatures with very high fevers, like in cerebral malaria,  and also with heat exhaustion, ("mad dogs and Englishmen go[ing] out in the midday sun"), but in both cases the temperature is only "high" relative to what the brain is used to.

You can get the bone marrow to over-produce red blood cells, but the suggested method is to give injections of the hormone called Erythropoeitin.

More red blood cells than you need is called "Erythrocytosis" or "Polycythaemia."

In my humble opinion, to get anything like medical realism you would need to site your novel in a science-fiction environment where you can ignore conventional heat science, like in Herbert's "Dune."

Or maybe create a race of humanoids who don't obey conventional laws of physics.

I'm suggesting humbly as a retired doctor, that the name is the least of your problems!  Just convert the principal manifestations of the disease into fragments of Latin or Greek and agglutinate the fragments.  I suggest "Erythropyrolysis," -

Erythro- refers to red blood cells, and "pyrolysis" is a non-medical word for destructive combustion, as you know.

Or "Erythrocytotic Pyrolysis" perhaps.  Or "Polycythaemic Pyrolysis."   Both are well-formed grammatically.  In America the latter would be spelled "polycythemic."

Or you can just use the common medical convention of naming the illness, by the name of the doctor who first described it.  Real-life examples are "Graves disease" (thyrotoxicosis), and "Down's Syndrome" (mongolism, trisomy 21).  Call it Belliger's disease, lol.

Hope this helps.

Best wishes,

Belliger
retired uk GP

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What Should I name this fictional Disease/Disorder?

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