Jaggy Splinters Read Free Page A

– of official, clinical test-standard placebo pills. However, cheap as these came, it always pays to shop around, so I also set up an account with Sucrosanto and placed orders for several of their signature products. Being an enthusiastic, new and locally based customer, I felt I ought to introduce myself personally to my new supplier, and suggested the ideal time to do so might be on a guided tour of their facility. Sucrosanto’s sales manager Sandy Gifford heartily concurred.
    The operation was accommodated within a compact little two-storey compound, a brand new construction largely surrounded by Seventies-built low-rises in varying states of disrepair or demolition. On the rainy Tuesday morning when I visited, Sandy was showing the ropes to a shy but eager young trainee lab technician named Carol. I was accompanied by Laura’s boyfriend Michael, posing as a student doing work experience at the clinic. He was dressed in a suit and tie for the occasion, but this only served to make him look even more like a student because of the sheer incongruity the effect conveyed. Michael is doing a PhD in astronomy, and his normal dress sense reflects the fact that he and his peers spend a lot of time hanging about in the dark.
    Sandy convened us initially in his office, where I asked him to walk me through the company’s ordering and shipping procedures. He showed me the place b. orders on his computer screen and explained the serial system that let them track precisely which pills went to which client, down to the individual packet, which bore the corresponding number.
    ‘It’s industry standard for British National Formulary pharmaceuticals. Homeopathic remedies aren’t required to comply with those regulations, but some of us believe it’s only a matter of time before they’re either accepted on to the BNF or just forced to toe the same line by new legislation. Either way, we prefer to be ahead of the game.’
    Sandy then took us into the lab, where he talked us through the whole process, ‘With apologies to Mr Litton, who is bound to be a lot more familiar with this information than young Carol here.’
    ‘Don’t take anything as read on my account,’ I assured him. ‘One can always learn something new. Besides, the theory behind homeopathy is something I never tire of hearing,’ I added truthfully, though neglected to elaborate that this was because it gets funnier every time.
    ‘The father of homeopathy was a German physician by the name of Samuel Hahnemann. The term comes from the Greek: homos meaning similar and pathos meaning suffering, giving the principle that like cures like. This principle wasn’t Hahnemann’s, though: it was first suggested in ancient Greek times by Hippocrates, and given that he was the founder of the world’s first hospital, we can safely say that he knew what he was about.
    Sandy directed his words mainly at Carol as he warmed to his theme with the alacrity of a proud father telling his kids about the family business.
    ‘Now, back in the 1790s, a trusted remedy for malaria was cinchona bark, which is a source of quinine. Hahnemann was intrigued by the fact that this bark, when taken by a healthy person, caused symptoms similar to malaria, and experimented by taking small doses of it himself, precipitating fever, thirst and palpitations: all associated with malaria. From this, he devised his Law of Similars, as he called it, whereby diseases can be cured by substances that precipitate the same symptoms.’
    ‘Such vision,’ I said, smiling and shaking my head with apparent awe, ‘to devise such a wide-reaching law on the basis of that single observation.’
    Yeah, sarky me, but I had to say something to cover the fact that I was trying very hard to suppress a laugh. Hahnemann took a tiny quantity of cinchona bark – his reports state four grams, making the active ingredient utterly minute – and had a very nasty reaction to it, but it never struck the boy that he may simply