Many, many years ago everyone was strong and healthy. They ate a
very varied diet, and especially loved fruit, vegetables, and fish. Everyone
took daily
exercise
, and they enjoyed themselves playing and leaping
about. The Earth was the healthiest plac
e you could imagine, and it was
clear that both adults and children w
ere full of joy and good moods.
All that made the dark witches furious. They only ever wanted to do
harm and make problems for people. The worst of all of these witches was
Sourface;
she was evil, and could be relied on to come up with the nastiest
ideas. She suggested that all the witches combine their energies to invent a
potion which would take away people's desire to live happily. So, one
night, all the witches gathered down in th
e swampy forest and worked
together on that evil spell. The spell was so powerful, and would need so
much energy to cast, that when one of the witches got one of the words
wrong, there was a huge explosion. So big was the explosion, that it
c
ompletely dest
royed the forest.
It turned all those evil witches into tiny little creatures, like germs, and
left them trapped in a green liquid inside a small glass bottle, which lay lost
in the swamp. There they were trapped for centuries, until one day a little
boy found the bottle. Thinking it contained some kind of soft drink, he
drank the lot. The evil, microscopic witches took advantage of this
situation, and even though they were tiny and couldn't hurt anyone, they
soon learned to change the little boy's lik
es and dislikes in order to
get him
to do what they wanted.
In a few days, a funny feeling in his mouth and tongue meant the boy no
longer wanted to eat vegetables, fruit, or fish. All he wanted to do was eat
ice cream, pizza, burgers, and candy. Then
a nibbling feeling all over his
body meant he no longer enjoyed playing and running about with his
friends. All that stuff tired him out; he now just wanted to stay in the house,
sitting or lying about. So, his life got more and more boring, he started
fe
eling ill, and before long he had no desire to do anything. The evil potion
had worked! And the worst thing of all was that the witches learned to
jump from one person to another, like a virus. They managed to turn the
influence of the potion into the most
contagious of diseases: th
e disease of
wasting your life.
It was a long while before, with the help of his microscope; Doctor
Fitton
-
Helthie discovered that the little witches were causing all this
disease. There was no vaccine or cough mixture to ge
t rid of them, but the
good doctor discovered that the witches could not stand joy and good
humour. It turned out that the best cure was to make a strong effort to live a
healthy, joyful, and happy life. When a person became healthy, the little
witches wou
ld leave that body as soon as they could, riding off on a sneeze.
From then on, the best remedy was not pills or injections, but just a little
bit of effort to eat some fruit, vegetables, and fish, and to do some exercise.
And whoever came to see Doct
or Fitton
-
Helthie, and took his advice,
ended up totally well, being cured of the waste
-
of
-
life