Medicine and the music hall

One of the more entertaining byways of the Wellcome Library is its collection of medical songs. The Library has a significant collection of songsheets dating from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century, most of which had originally been performed in music halls – some by stars of the genre such as George Robey and Dan Leno. They were then commercially published for the public to buy and warble through at home or in amateur theatricals. Interestingly, medical matters feature prominently in such songs. This is not the only medical musical material found in the collections: the Library also holds books of verse composed by medics to amuse themselves and their colleagues.

The predominantly comic songs cover all kinds of subjects from vegetarianism and laughing gas to hypochondriacs, kidneys, germs and amputations:

"My starboard leg one day
A torpedo blew away
At the femur’s enarthrosis in its socket, oh!"

The most popular topics of all were medics and their remedies. In a song called ‘The Doctor’, the physician cheerfully sings:

"When I’m not writing prescriptions,
I’m preparing little epitaphs & suitable inscriptions
For the use of future patients on their tombs."

Another doctor called ‘Jeremy Snob’ mistakes the prescription whilst treating a nervous patient, so that:

"I quite cur’d his Limbs of their shaking: / But laid him as dead as a Last."

When physicians themselves were the lyricists, of course, the medical profession came out looking rather better.

"Who’s welcomed warmly everywhere,
By stalwart men and ladies fair?
Who to the children all is dear?
The Doctor."

Female doctors were often satirised; nurses rarely were, being sacred beings. Students were fair game. The eponymous ‘Medical Student’:

"…Never has much in his pocket,
And the reason for this is quite clear,
He so quickly gets rid of his money
By drinking that horrible beer!!"

Patients were lampooned as well. ‘The Medical Man’ features a series of patients who are "terribly dense/In fact exceedingly silly". One is told to take his medicine "in water, three times a day", and therefore climbs into the bath for each dose. Another is prescribed a "change of air", so helpful friends buy him a ginger wig.

Many songs concerned quack remedies. James Morison’s notorious, aggressively marketed ‘vegetable pills’ were the subject of at least two songs. The cover of ‘Morison’s Pills’ shows an ironic pair of ‘before’ and ‘after’ figures, the latter tipping a boxful of grapefruit-sized balls down his throat. In another song, the ‘Steam Pills’ of a ‘Dr. Morisson [sic]’ are supposed to be so efficacious "that two would produce a new leg in three hours!"

Yet the songsheets themselves often contained advertisements, and occasionally these promoted the very remedies satirised in the song. ‘The Painkiller Polka’, for example, advertised ‘Perry Davis’ Pain Killer’ on its final page. Other songs were entirely motivated by advertising, being commissioned and published by the manufacturers.

This is just a superficial dip into the joys of the medical song collection. Some of the material quoted here is available through the Library’s online catalogue, but the main songsheet collection must be accessed via a list in the Library’s rare materials room. With the demise of the music hall tradition, songs such as the Painkiller Polka are seldom if ever heard. Nevertheless, these curiosities provide a fascinating and unusual insight into the social standing of doctors and their treatments over the past few centuries.

See also

• Wellcome Library online catalogue: Perform searches for songsheets online