I want to help people. I have always wanted to help people. I have lived my entire life with the unwavering conviction that a man's achievements are limited only by his imagination, and I have strived to imagine the impossible. I speak not of silver-necked dragons or tooth faeries, nor do I speak of six-legged radishes or corpulent elves. I speak instead of what others who have come before me has considered impossible. I speak of alleviating acute viral nasopharyngitis- the common cold, which every physician since Hippocrates has written off as 'incurable.' Incurable? Can they seriously gaze down from their ivory towers at the sniffly, coughing throngs amassed beneath them pleading for reprieve and say "If I don't know what to do, then there must be nothing that can be done"? Not I. I have developed a cure for the common cold- but you need to rub this camphorated salve on your chest for it to work. Hold still and I'll show you.
Don't shy away! The wheels of progress cannot turn forward if the breaks of fear are engaged! My miracle salve will alleviate even the toughest symptoms of the common cold. I've incorporated eucalyptus into this salve to soothe sore throats, and turpentine oil to ward off catarrh. Perhaps you do not know what catarrh is, because you haven't as much medical education as I, but I assure you that it is the least pleasant of mucous-related ailments and that my slighly greasy camphorated salve can stop it. Please allow me to demonstrate by rubbing a generous palmful onto your chest.
Come on now! You have now twice rejected the opportunity to experience the future that medical science has promised all along. Do you mean to tell me that you would rather stumble through the rest of your day bleary-eyed and sore than allow me to smear some salve on your chest? That's absurd. As your body heat vaporizes my miraculously potent poultice, the medicine will take effect instantly, relieving your cold symptoms and curing your ailment. Where would we be today if gentlemen as skittish as you had turned down the treatments proposed by Sir Alexander Fleming, or Jonas Salk? Why, we'd be stuck wallowing in our own infected filth, covered in polios. I don't want that, and I don't think that you do either. Why don't you be a sport and let me put this handful of medicated cream on your chest. Still no? What about your neck?
Perhaps I can just spread a fingerful of it on your upper lip. Even just a small amount will halt inflammation in its tracks and clear your thinking. I'm making a compromise with you! Why must you be so intractable? I had thought that people would welcome my discovery with open arms. I had thought that if I tried to do good in this world I would not be spurned by those I tried to help. All I want to do is cure you, you ungrateful imp! If you can't appreciate the difficulty of what I've done- making an ointment which, when spread liberally about one's chest, will vaporize, causing itself and any and all cold symptoms to dissappear- then perhaps you don't deserve the benefit it confers on those who use it. Still, I will be the bigger man and gladly give this ointment to you, because I can't stand to see anybody- even an ungrateful body- in misery. Besides, I hadn't anticipated such resistance on your part, and now this stuff is melting all over my hand.
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