The Ends of Our Tethers by Alasdair Gray

partly true. The first itch was so tiny that a quick stab with a needle could have stopped it had I known the exact point to stab. But this was impossible, so I scratched the general area which itched even more the harder, the more widely and wildly I scratched. This crescendo of itching and scratching grew so fiercely ecstatic that I only stopped when my nails had torn bloody gashes inthat leg and the delight changed to pain.
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    Since then I have often enjoyed that ecstasy, suffered that pain. The disease spread to other limbs, torso, neck and head. I could no longer supervise work in houses under renovation. Dust from cement, plasterboard and timber maddened my itches to a frenzy that only the hottest of baths subdued. Under the pain of scalding water the skin also felt many wee points of delight, as if each itch was being exactly, simultaneously scratched and satisfied. I left the bath with my skin a patchwork of pink and red sores that I patted dry, ointmented with Vaseline, covered with clean pyjamas, every itch now replaced by dull pain. So I went to bed and slept sound by quickly drinking half a litre of neat spirits. Perhaps modern pills would have knocked me out more cheaply but I felt safer with a drug folk have tested on themselves for centuries.
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    So the main side effects of the disease are:
exile from the constructive part of my business,
exile from my wife’s bed,
her endless work to clean up my stained sheets and underclothes,
greatly increased dependence on alchohol,
a search for cures.
    After a thing called A Patch Test my doctor explained that the disease was due to an inherited defect in the immune system defending my skin. A mainly serene and prosperous life had not strained it but now, weakened by recent emotional shocks, I was allergic to forms of dust that nobody could avoid. The origin of the allergy, being genetic, was incurable, but medication should reduce the symptoms. He prescribed a steroid cream to combat eruptions, an emollient to reduce the flaking, anti-histamine pills to ease the itching and (to be used instead of soap) a bath oil that also counteracted infection.
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    These helped for a while. The rashes healed in places and itched far less until the steroid cream ran out. My doctor was unwilling to prescribe more because continuous use made the skin dangerously thin. He prescribed a less potent antibiotic cream and arranged a consultation with askin specialist who, because of a long waiting list, would see me five months later. My wife wanted me to jump that queue by paying for a private consultation. I refused for two reasons. 
    (1) I am a socialist who thinks our national health service is the best thing the British Government ever created, and is undermined by folk buying into a private system which can only exist because its doctors are also partly subsidised by ordinary taxpayers, and:
    (2) I like saving money. 
    But while waiting for the appointment I noticed near my home an alternative medicine clinic, though not the sort using astrology and occultism. The consultation fee was not huge so I tried it. An ordinary looking youth weighed me, examined my fingernails, tongue and inner eyelids, asked questions about my eating and drinking habits, then delivered a small lecture.
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    Everyone must live by consuming more solids and fluids than their body needs, so our digestions, kidneys and liver help to excrete what cannot nourish us. With age these weaken and work lessefficiently, especially in middle-class people like me who eat and drink too much. The excess not expelled through my bowels and bladder is retained in fat or expelled through the skin, damaging it on the way. I should therefore stop drinking alcohol, coffee and tea, apart from one cup of the last each day. I should daily drink at least three pints of pure water, should stop eating meat and poultry, but consume as much fish as I liked if it was not fried. I should also cut out dairy