Suck a Pebble

A hideous malady is sweeping the nation.  Dry Mouth Syndrome stalks the land spreading misery and despair in its wake.  Fortunately for the sufferers of this fell condition help is at hand.  At least so a recent television commercial informs me.  According to a professionally dressed woman who reads an autocue with the sort of nuance and depth of emotion normally associated with laundry lists Dry Mouth Syndrome (it is worthy of capitalisation) is a curse comparable with the biblical plagues at their worst.

However relief is at hand or so this woman woodenly assured me.  Apparently the world's top medical researchers have tossed aside their work on trivial crap like cancer and heart disease and by dint of furious effort their combined genius has been crowned with success.  This is the greatest leap forward for medical science since doctors stopped rubbing dirt into wounds to make them heal faster.  Dry Mouth Syndrome has been conquered.  This has got to be worth a Nobel prize for those involved or at least a carton of Marlboros and the afternoon off.

I can't help thinking that medical science has got ridiculously involved in recent times.  In the old days all you could catch was plague and you either died or you didn't.  Grim, certainly but refreshingly uncomplicated.  If anybody wanted to explain an illness to one of their medieval forebears nowadays the first thing they would have to do is give them a lecture on the last thousand years of medical history.  Actually the first thing they would have to do is invent a time machine but the medical history lesson would come second.

Don't expect too much sympathy from your ancestors though.  After sitting patiently through your long winded explanation their response is probably going to be something like, "Dry mouth?  Suck a damned pebble and get to work.  These fields aren't going to plough themselves."