Water is essential to life. We all know that. But did you know that it can also cure all kinds of disease? Not ordinary water of course, the magic lies in drinking “clustered water.” This huckster concept is so bizarre that it is difficult to explain. The claims go along the following lines. “When we are young, our bodies are full of clustered water,” so the quacks say, “and as we grow older, our clustered water becomes physically bound to other molecular structures and becomes unable to move freely through cell walls.” This is a real problem, they explain, because it is clustered water that delivers oxygen, nutrients, proteins and enzymes to a cell and removes toxins. Needless to say, this is preposterous gobbledy gook. But, let’s go on. So what, according to the charlatans, are we to do? Fortify ourselves by drinking clustered water! Luckily for us, these good Samaritans have invented various devices that can take ordinary water and rearrange its molecules to form the healing clusters. Sometimes it is some sort of filter that is “packed with bioceramic beads which emit far infrared rays that vibrate and energize the water,” sometimes it is a magnetic device, and sometimes it is laser technology with a “Template Induction Process.” My favorite water cluster hucksters are the guys who say they have succeeded in adding “the energy signatures of argon, krypton and xenon to the formula...the energy from the very center of the inert gas atom is of several natures at once, providing aetheric energy, the same that is produced by the life force in the human body. What mindless twaddle! But it is not harmless fuddle-duddle. Why not? Because there are claims that clustered water can treat real diseases, such as kidney problems.
Well, clustered water is about as effective as the “kidney-healing Australian crystals” hawked by Ray Black a hundred years ago. This comical snake oil salesman took advantage of the gullible by claiming that he had an answer to kidney problems, which he explained often manifested themselves as low back pain. He had found the secret in Australia, the clever pitchman claimed, where some birds lived up to 500 years. Lacking birth certificates for the birds, the public had to take Black’s word for this. These birds, he blathered on, lived by springs which were lined with crystals and these crystals were responsible for their longevity. And he had managed to get a supply of these miraculous crystals, which he sold for a dollar a box. A hefty price in those days for Epsom salts, which Black had purchased for a few pennies. Sales were brisk because Black’s stories of miraculous healing went on and on, until his listeners developed a back ache from standing for such a long time. That’s when with perfect timing, Black revealed that the first sign of kidney disease was back problems. Although illiterate, Black liked to pretend he could read. But one day a passer- by saw him holding a newspaper upside down. “Don’t you know the paper is bottom side up” he asked? The ingenious huckster was not phased one bit. “Any damned fool can read a paper right side up,” he retorted. “Reading it this way exercises my eyes and my brain.” Maybe so, after all he was smart enough to sell ineffective remedies to the public for diseases they did not have. Just like the clustered water charlatans.
