The Great Healing Prayer Experiment

We've always taken a great interest in the Science vs Religion debate.  And we decided that we wanted to get to the bottom of the issue of whether prayer is efficacious in healing or not. So we thought we'd set up a proper experiment to see what the best cure is for swine flu - science or prayer for healing.

Now the first problem we had was getting several people to catch swine flu at the same time.  Thankfully, as a result of locking six people in the Study together with someone who was already suffering, and leaving them for a week, we soon had our supply of guinea pigs.

We were very keen to maintain scientific rigour.  So we locked each of our victims subjects into their rooms and pushed food and drink under their doors (basically, tortillas and wet flannels worked.  Victoria sponges were a real disaster).  The "treatment" for each was as follows:

We prayed six times a day for Elspeth.
We prayed three times a day for Aardwolf.
We lit a tea light every evening for Aldo.
We gave Roordrick Tamiflu
We let Gordo drink single malt whisky.
We beat Dryad with sticks to drive out the demons.
We also locked Rondolf in his room without any treatment as a control*.

After three days, Elspeth was "feeling a bit blurgh".  Aardwolf was coughing, but otherwise still alive.  Aldo was middling, Roordrick was vomiting from the effects of the Tamiflu, and Gordo suffering from much the same condition due to the whisky.  But on the third occasion that we went to beat Dryan with sticks, she punched Hnaef in the eye and ran out into the garden screaming "Leave me alone!  I'm feeling much better now!"
All of which leads us to conclude that, given the various options for treating disease, beating people with sticks to drive out the demons is definitely the best option.  I reckon it's all pretty conclusive.  In fact, we're going to try it on Rondolf now.

*He didn't even have flu, which made him an even better control.