"Well, there was this guy who'd been living a really great life as an art dealer in 
New York City, making tons of money and everything. He was 30 and fixed for life,
a millionaire, when he went to the doctor and found out that he had a very rare bone 
disease that was sure to kill him before he reached 31. So he went around the country, 
visiting hospitals and specialists, but no one was able to help him. The answer was 
always the same: 'It's incurable, extremely rare, no one has ever found anything that has 
the slightest effect on the disease.' And already the guy was starting to disintegrate; 
you know, they had to amputate an arm, it would be a foot next... he was real desperate. 

Then he heard from a friend of a friend of a doctor that there was this guy, a kind of 
warlock, in Australia no less, who had spent years developing a potion that cured all bone
disorders!  The guy's name was Dr. Mersey. It all seemed sorta dubious, but with one month 
left to live he wasn't going to turn anything down. Besides, what the heck, he'd always 
wanted to visit Australia.

So, anyway, there he went the next day. When he arrived, it took him a week to fly, be 
driven, and finally (with a great deal of difficulty) hike to Mersey's place. He finally 
got there -- three weeks to live, and his right foot had fallen off along the way -- and 
was rewarded with the sight of a really huge tin shack with a kind of chimney/smokestack 
thing on top, and evil-looking dense brown smoke pouring out of the top, and surrounded by 
eucalyptus trees.

Dr. Mersey came out to greet the guy (he'd been notified by radio-telephone) and told him 
about the treatment. 'It's a potion brewed out of eucalyptus and koala bears and boiled for 
two years before it's drunk. Luckily I have some just ready.  It tastes terrible, you'll 
vomit for days, and your hair will fall out, but you will be cured.' 

The guy wasn't too pleased at the first part but he figured anything was better than dying.  
So Mersey gave him a tour of the place, There was the hopper where the koala bears were 
stuffed in live! and a vat where they were boiled for years. Horrid lumps were floating 
around and the evil brown smoke was emanating fiercely. Finally the stuff dripped out of a 
little pipe into a rusty can. It was brown and oily and had hairs and pieces of koala meat 
and bone floating around in it. The doctor says, 'Here, drink this.' 

The poor guy asked the doctor,'Couldn't you filter out the... stuff.. that's floating in it, 
first?'



Get ready now, I warned you......






And the doctor, shaking his head sadly, says:    'The koala tea of Mersey is not strained...