They Will Remember My Carbuncles

From Scientific American, something you didn't know about Karl Marx...

"Workers of the world, unite!: You have nothing to lose but your—pustules!"
Karl Marx may have erred in predicting the "withering away" of the state under communism, but he got one thing right: "The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day," he wrote in an 1867 letter to his longtime collaborator Friedrich Engels, referring to painful boils on his rump and nether regions. In a paper slated for the January British Journal of Dermatology, dermatology professor Sam Shuster of the University of East Anglia concludes from Marx's correspondences that the radical 19th-century political theorist suffered from hidradenitis suppurativa, a blockage and chronic inflammation of the sweat glands in the armpits and groin that can cause painful boillike lumps, swelling and scarring. The unsightly pustules made it hard for Marx to work and may have contributed to the alienation and self-loathing expressed in his writings, Shuster told Reuters. The revolutionary consoled himself by noting that it was at least a "proletarian disease."