Dead-Bang Read Free

there had been nothing wrong with him in the first place. Second, if he’d really been sick and was now less sick, the improvement was due to “spontaneous remission,” which is a medical term meaning he’s-better-but-quit-bugging-me-about-it. Or, third, the improvement was due to the delayed but happy result of previous treatment by a medical doctor, perhaps in 1940.
    Such a subversive and probably poisonous substance as Erovite, then, would have to be carefully tested and examined by medical doctors and researchers, possibly for as long as a hundred years. There was sudden and quite violent opposition to the unrestricted sale of Erovite. The possible dangers inherent in its continued use were discussed at great length via newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Increasingly it was denounced by experts and others who know about such things. Erovite, and Emmanuel Bruno, were in trouble.
    But that trouble, emanating from Organized Medicine—from the AMA and the FDA and the Department of HEW and other concerned alphabets and individuals—was as nothing compared to the fury and denunciation and threats of damnation that, at first temperately but with gathering might and mania as the months wore on, were hurled against Bruno and Erovite by God Almighty. Or, rather, by the Almighty’s spokesmen on Earth, which is the same thing.
    In sum, Bruno was being attacked not only by the leaders of Organized Medicine but by the leaders of Organized Religion as well. Could a man possibly have found himself in a more precarious position, unless tied to a stake with the faggots lit and pierced by a poisoned caduceus?
    Well, there was a reason for this part of it, too. At the same time when rational doubt was weakening much medical dogma, the Church—not entirely, but primarily the Christian Church—was finding its Omniscience and Authority being increasingly questioned. And, interestingly, questioned for very similar reasons. To make matters worse, there was in progress what was alleged to be a sexual revolution.
    In the official Church view, sexual revolutions are not good. The Church takes a very dim view of sexual revolutions. Some say it takes a very dim view of sexual anythings. Yet there was arising what many considered a saner, healthier view to replace the rack on which sex had been stretched for upward of sixteen centuries. More and more of the faithful were wondering why, if sex was taboo and sinful in so many terrible ways, as they had been solemnly assured by God’s spokesmen, God Himself had made it so stupendously delicious. Certainly it wasn’t painful. At least, not usually.
    Then along came Erovite. And with it, catastrophe.
    For one fact about Erovite soon became strikingly evident: whether or not it made people feel better or worse, whether or not it cured or killed them, it was, unquestionably, an astonishingly potent aphrodisiac.
    As practically everybody knows, an aphrodisiac is a euphemism for “lots of fun,” but it is commonly thought of as a substance which, when ingested, gives rise to inner and even outer tumult, to lascivious thought, venery, tumescence, and palpitations, to thoughts of and desire for sexual downfall. Inevitably, when thumping and burning with such palpitations and desires, many so afflicted did, in their weakness, indulge in the act which temporarily obsessed them as a swell idea.
    Long before this, long before, the Church had made it clear to all with ears to hear or eyes to see that it was strength to use those ears for hearing and eyes for seeing, even to joyously employ legs and arms and noses for functions natural to legs and arms and noses, but it was always carnal weakness and often an abomination to use the organs of sex for sex, they somehow being more carnal than carnal ears and eyes and noses, which may seem strange, but is all right, for the Church works in strange ways its wonders to perform.
    Thus when reports began to come in