Essay / Misc.

Mr. Collins Apologizes to Aspirin

MY DEAR BOTTLE OF BAYER,

I feel myself constrained by your medical qualifications and my own recent physical indispositions of a cranial character, to call upon your services. Be assured, my dear Aspirin, that Mrs. Collins and myself sincerely desire the cessation, and that immediate, of the discomfort which has settled upon a man of my not inconsiderable station at this time in my life. I quite understand that more powerful drugs have become available in recent years, and am not insensitive of the way their powers have cast your own somewhat in the shade. Your own sense of inadequacy in the face of such unstoppable progress must be of the bitterest kind, because proceeding from a cause which no time can remove and which the advance of modern science shall only exacerbate as your influence fades year by year. Indeed, while seeking comfort from you I am most keenly aware, I assure you, that I must needs also minister no small comfort to you in this dire circumstance that must be of all others most afflicting to a vintage legacy medicine. And it is the more to be lamented, because there is reason to suppose, as my dear Charlotte informs me, that the remarkable progress made by Ibuprofin and other more effective pain relievers has proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence on the part of those who are addicted to your ministrations, though at the same time, for the consolation of yourself and your physicians, I am inclined to think that your own chemical properties must be naturally impotent in some degree, or your devotees should not be guilty of such an enormity of consumption. Howsoever that may be, you are grievously to be pitied, in which opinion I am not only joined by Mrs. Collins, but likewise by Lady Catherine de Burgh, my ineffably condescending patroness. Who, as Lady Catherine herself remarks often, will continue to consume such a drug? Let me advise you then, my dear Aspirin, to console yourself as much as possible, and to rise to the challenge of alleviating my own aching head, as surely other drugs would do were they in your unenviable position.

I am, dear Sir, &c. &c.”

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