How does one diagnose a combinatorial disease? It is usually highly infectious, and the problem has an elementary formulation which more often than not is understandable to a good high school student. Of the combinatorial diseases that have been identified starting with Harary's paper some forty years ago, only one has been cured so far; but in some other cases we understand now better why a "cure" as it was originally envisaged is not likely to be forthcoming. In my talk, I would like to expand on some of my favourite combinatorial diseases, in the hope that this will spur renewed, and hopefully more successful, attempts at curing at least some of them. These are: the labelling disease, the Erd{\" o}s-Faber-Lov{\' a}sz disease, and the Buratti problem.