It can be a rather straigtforward theme - if you want it to be. Everyone has been sick at least a few times, and it's easy to imagine Tolkien's characters in such situation. Elves are an exception - they supposedly don't get sick from natural causes, but that still leaves some unnatural causes to your fantasy (dark magic? poison? maybe the sealonging can be viewed as a sickness as well?). Middle-earth is based on our world, and one can assume that the same bacteria and viruses would plaque its non-elvish population as to plaque us. But some types of sickness don't have an equivalent in our world, and our medicine would not be able to deal with them, like Frodo's illness in the anniversaries of his injuries.

Besides a disease though, there can be also other forms of sickness, which are more about the state of the mind. Remember the dragon-sickness of Thorin, or madness of Denethor, for example. Even a simple home-sickness falls into this cathegory. The land can get sick as well: imagine the scars that Sauron's rule left in Mordor, the Brown lands that used to be the Ent-wives' gardens once, or what Saruman was able to do in the Shire in even a short time. A sick land can be healed just like a sick person, but it can take much, much longer - and just like with human healing, some scars are left forever.

P.S. March is also Back to Middle-earth month. The 2015 theme is "Tharbad's Greenway Spring Faire" - a big marketplace with prompts and fanworks for all! The full rules can be found here.

P.P.S. not really serious note from Mirach: This theme would be great for a House MD in Middle-earth crossover :D Would someone like to write that? *puppy eyes*

And the winners are:

Happy reading and congratulations to the winners!