I don’t know where EoR finds this stuff, but I like the way Deborah Ross thinks when she discusses offering alternative medical practitioners alternative methods of payment. Not surprisingly, they aren’t interested:
There has been much fuss this week about the ‘scientific status’ of homeopathy, just as there is always a fuss about ‘alternative’ treatments generally. Personally, I have no patience with the dismissive and often contemptuous attitude these therapies can attract, as there are many useful treatments and products on offer out there. These include:
THE ALTERNATIVE CREDIT CARD (Guaranteed APR – Actual Patient Rip-off – of not less than 100 per cent)
THIS is an absolutely essential item for anyone considering any kind of alternative treatment. Indeed, as alternative as any therapist might be, he or she is not, I have discovered, generally keen on accepting any alternative kind of payment.
For example, I once tried to pay an aromatherapist alternatively with an old shoe, and she wasn’t having any of it.
In particular, though, I like this proposed “alternative method of payment” for homeopathy practitioners:
It’s the same, alas, with homeopaths. As homeopathy attempts to treat the sick with extremely diluted agents – sometimes so diluted that the water has only a ‘memory’ of the original agent – I thought I could pay with some pocket fluff which, surely, would remember having rubbed against money at various times in its life.
And what did I receive for my trouble? A punch on the nose that, alas, did not appear diluted at all!
Not very homeopathic of that practitioner, was it? Personally, I’d propose paying a homeopath with my expired AAA card. After all, it resided for a couple of years in my wallet, and thus came into contact with the leather of the wallet, which was in near-constant contact with money. Thus it’s “diluted” at least a couple of times. Surely there’s left an energetic imprint from all the money that passed in and out of my wallet during those years that the card was there!
If anyone out there has other suggestions for alternative methods of payment for alt-med practitioners, here’s your chance. Leave ’em in the comments below.
