SCANDAL: Big Leech Industry Lied About Humour Imbalances to Drive Up Cost of Leeches
SCANDAL: Big Leech Industry Lied About Humour Imbalances to Drive Up Cost of Leeches
At a tyme when more people than ever require daily bloodletting to balance their humours, the skyrocketing cost of prescription leeches hath pushed many malhumourous people into debt.
A new report from the Royal Institute of Effluviads and Humours hath shown that merchants in the Big Leech industry hath employed scurrilous practices for years to drive up the cost of leeches.
“With all of our advances in modern humourism, there be no reason the average blacksmith or shopkeeper shouldn’t be able to afford prescription leeches,” sayeth Royal Sürgeon Dr. Jeclonius Sphłînt. “But unfortunately, exorbitant leech costs hath bankrupted many phlegmatic patients. Others hath resorted to dangerous alternative treatments like rest and hydration.”
The Institute’s report shows that Big Leech frequently paid doctors to misdiagnose their patients with humour imbalances in order to prescribe them leechings. This didst create a higher demand for leeches and drove prices up. Many people with otherwise balanced humours hath now become humouristically dependent on regular leechings.
“I went to my local physician/monk/wine merchant with a minor case of the yellow bile, so he prescribed me a leeching. Pretty standard,” sayeth barrelchaser Jurj Ælthrop. “All seemed well, but when the scribe read my bill to me I thought, ‘I have no idea how to do math, but meself ist pretty sure ‘tis more than I earn in a year chasing barrels.’”
“I’ve been struggling to pay off that bloodletting bill e’er since.”
The scandal hath involved everyone from village leechologists all the way up to the Kingdom’s leading leech merchant, Pfinibus Tsuckor. Tsuckor’s leech syndicate allegedly paid magistrates nearly 30 chests of gold and jewels in the past year to get them to look the other way. But Tsuckor holds that his parasites help many a patient in need.
“My blood leeches hath helped countless people whose temperaments were awry,” he sayeth. “One cannot put a pryce on a body cleansed of excess phlegm and sanguine phluid.”
But those committed to ethickal and affordable bloodletting art determined to fight back.
“Big Leech’s greed ist insatiable,” sayeth Sphłînt. “They care more about profits than about removing foul humours from our bodies, and they must be stopped, or at least taxed more so that money ends up in the Royal Coffers.”