Jaggy Splinters Read Free

information, and hit upon a means of constructing a genuinely double-blind experiment: one in which not only neither the patient nor the homeopath knows whether placebos are being prescribed, but in which neither even knows they are part of the trial.
    The key to it all is a small company called Sucrosanto. I read about them briefly in the local evening paper, in a piece about the regeneration of a rather run-down light-industrial estate in Corstorphine. I wasn’t even reading the piece, just skimming through the story next to it, about an archaeological find in Liberton, when my eye happened to catch the phrase ‘fought off stiff competition from several other suppliers to grab the exclusive contract to supply several key drugs to the Edinburgh and Lothian Homeopathic Hospital’. Sucrosanto, it turned out, were the ELHH’s conveniently local sole source of Bryonia, Chamomilla, Arsen, Nux Vom and Aconite, five of its most commonly prescribed remedies.
    If the ELHH practices alternative medicine, then it would be fair to say that I have been known to practice what might be termed alternative journalism, and this wee nugget provided the impetus for a wee bit of just that. Before doing anything, though, I ran the idea past my wife, Sarah. Being a doctor, she was able to provide me with valuable contacts and technical assistance, as well as giving the project the ethical once-over. However, being my wife, she couldn’t allow herself to be
nothing but
helpful, and found it imperative to throw down a familiar condition.
    ‘You are not allowed to go breaking into this place, Jack,’ she told me, and not in a smiley, jokey, but-I-know-you-will-anyway-you-irascible-sexy-thing-you kind of way.
    Busted – but not all the way back to the drawing board. Rather, Sarah’s insistence led to a fairly inspired refinement to the scheme, so I was able to give her my solemn promise. Besides, she only said
I
wasn’t allowed to go breaking into the place.
    It took only a few weeks to get place b. up and running, with the choice of décor and furniture the most taxing aspect of the start-up process. Fortunately, you don’t need any kind of licence or indeed any authorised credentials whatsoever in order to set yourself up as an alternative therapist. As of this year, you’re not allowed to make specific claims about your practice without proof of therapeutic effectiveness, but nobody in this business is dumb enough to do that. Keep it vague, that’s the key. Never tell them what you’re trying to achieve and the punters can never claim you didn’t deliver. Look at Boots – they’re flogging packets of homeopathic pills bearing the keys-up, cannae-catch-us phrase: ‘without approved therapeutic indications’. It tells you on the fucking box that it doesn’t work, but it’s proving no impediment to sales. That’s Boots as in Boots the chemist, though perhaps it ought to now read Boots the shameless, whoring, snake-oil peddlers.
    I took out some ads in local papers and a few carefully selected publications, while Sarah got some GP friends of hers to make some referrals. The patients they recommended me to were not misled about anything other than my name. They were informed that this was an experimental therapy, that I was not medically qualified, that the remedies I was likely to prescribe were not clinically proven, and that nor would any of it come cheap. All of these warnings proved as effective a disincentive as the admission on the Boots packets. The plan was that I would front this charade one day a week. In practice, I found myself opening three and could have filled the diary for five. The thought that I was in the wrong business did cross my mind a few times as I overheard my friend Laura, who was posing as my receptionist, speaking on the telephone politely turning new patients away.
    Sarah’s connections allowed me to furnish myself with a generous supply – a super-abundance, in fact, despite my clinic’s popularity