Fritz Spiegl's MuSick Notes

"Following his immensely popular Sick Notes (also from Parthenon), Fritz Spiegl takes us on a fascinating musical tour through medicine, from the 18th to the 20th centuries. As early as 1928 The Thinnest Girl I Know warns against anorexia and, to balance it, Mr. Double Stout in the 1850s extols William Banting, inventor of slimming diets. Also music about vegetarianism, hypochondria, malingering, phrenology, the 1921 'Monkey Gland Scandal' (wickedly satirised long before organ transplants became a reality), etc; and a gavotte for a giant vibrator of 1885, "affording the fair sex a similar exercise to that given by the saddle-horse". Also patent-medicine advertising jingles which companies like Beechams cleverly persuaded patients themselves to sing. The pertinent commentaries in Spiegl's witty style, well known from his numerous BBC broadcasts, book and newspaper columns, fill in the background - just as his Sick Notes entertainments, in which he and his singing colleagues have long delighted medical audiences."--Jacket.