It’s been a long week. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday were spent celebrating other people’s birthdays, so when it came to my own birthday on Sunday I found myself in the recovery position for much of the day, which as all medical students know involves lying down on a lumpy mattress, staring at the ceiling within reach of a cheese sandwich and a can of Diet Coke. I did eventually steal out for a quiet consolation drink with Rachel and Steve and a fleeting appearance from martylog. Steve regaled us with tales of all the letters he receives at his workplace, the location of which probably shouldn’t be mentioned on a blog as widely ignored as this one, for reasons of discretion. But I can reveal that this gentleman came up during the conversation.

It’s worth exploring his website for a while, if you’re bored, if only to check out inventions of his such as “The use of an Oil Eating Bacteria for use on Oil Spills at sea, put to Harold Wilson, a similar method to the one that was used in the Gulf War on the beaches”, and “The Coefficient of Voting Behaviour that proves that the Labour vote is inversely proportional to the price of oil”. The most intriguing, though, is his method of curing mental health problems. His technique “stuns and resets the brain of the patient”, and involves simply “striking both ears of the patient at exactly the same time and pressure with the soft part of the inner hand”. That’s all. It resets the brain. No, really. “I am having a hard time getting this Method used in the UK,” says our intrepid inventor. You don’t say.

So basically, he cures mental health by hitting the afflicted rather hard about the head. Let’s imagine, for one moment, that this does actually work; how on earth did he set about testing this remedy? Just battering depressed people with various implements until they started to show signs of improvement? Reading further, it transpires that this is a subtle treatment with varying levels of application: “With rape victims, the Method should be done only twice, so that most of the trauma of the rape is taken away, and yet the victim can still remember the incident for any future court case.” He’s clearly thought this one through.

I’m finding myself having to deal with rather bad symptoms of anxiety at the moment, which partly explains my 7-day absence, but I have to say that, while I’m open to most avenues of possibility, I’ve decided to leave this particular remedy to one side. At least for the time being. He also seems to be working on “a surgical technique for restructuring the jaw bone,” so watch out, all you people with jaw bones.