Most of us live in two countries, similar yet different. One is the country we actually inhabit, the other is the country promoted by our national tourist office. In much the same way, medicine exists in two worlds: the world in which patients and their doctors struggle to survive and the world promoted by politicians, medicated soap operas and the advertising industry.
I sensed the distinction between the worlds in which I live when I visited a small museum in North London. Displayed within it were magazine advertisements from the first half of the twentieth century, making it a haven where persons of a certain age could wallow in nostalgia. The fading pages conjured up a world that was nearly, but not quite, the world I once inhabited, populated by people almost, but not quite, as I remembered them.
A recurring figure was the all-wise family doctor. My memories of childhood suggest he really did exist, in a benign rather than an all-wise form, but maybe those memories were nurtured by the strip cartoon used to advertise Horlicks, sadly missing from the North London collection.
In the first frame of the strip, tragedy would strike at the heart of middle-class life. Young Daphne’s backhand would deteriorate, Daddy would lose his temper with his secretary, Mummy would grow tired and irritable, or Grandpa would stumble over the agenda at the golf club committee. Then some kindly friend would suggest that the person in distress should see a doctor. In the next frame, a serious-faced GP would immediately diagnose ‘night starvation’ and prescribe a cup of calming Horlicks to be taken at bedtime. The final frame, usually labelled ‘A month later’, would show Daphne winning the tournament, Daddy being nominated as ‘boss of the year’ by the typing pool, Mummy being lauded by members of the Women’s Institute for organising the fete, or Grandpa driving himself in as the newly elected president of the golf club. And above each proud visage would float the bubble: ‘Thinks … Thanks to Horlicks.’
The campaign was so successful that Ovaltine had to fight back by founding a children’s club of Ovaltineys of which my sister and I were enthusiastic members. Our club song, ‘We are the Ovaltineys, little girls and boys,’ blared out regularly from Radio Luxembourg and so worried Horlicks that they organised a competition for a song of their own. That contest is still bitterly remembered in my household because a grave miscarriage of justice denied the prize to the schoolgirl who was later to become my wife. Her entry (set to a traditional air) began:
Men of Horlicks lead the nation.
Save us all from night starvation.
My visit to the museum reminded me that the all-wise doctor of the advertising world wasn’t as clever as we thought he was. One of the best-known claims of 1930s and ’40s American advertising was: ‘More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.’
But then international athletes also claimed to smoke Camels, ‘because they know they’re good for their wind’.
And in another ‘celebrity endorsement’, ‘Film star Dolores del Rio, who has her throat insured for $50,000, tells why it’s good business for her to smoke Luckies.’
But the saddest – and now sickest – advertisement of them all dates from the First World War: a drawing of a young officer on sick leave, a bandage round his head and a cigarette between his fingers, walking arm in arm with a young woman. Beneath the drawing is the dialogue:
Gertie: You brave boys would smoke your cigarettes even if you were dying.
Bertie: You bet we would, you dear old thing – and save our bally lives.
Other exhibits at the museum were reminders that just as fear is the commonest symptom to drive patients to a doctor, so it is the commonest symptom to drive punters to a huckster. Advertisements from the 1930s and ’40s reveal just how great was the fear of any form of illness before the coming of antibiotics. And that fear was shamelessly exploited. One ad consists of a line drawing of an over-worried man who tells us, ‘I’ve got to have an operation.’ And below the picture comes an explanatory broken sentence: ‘More serious than most men realise … the troubles caused by harsh toilet tissue.’
The social revolution in which soft lavatory paper took over from the coarser stuff – now found only in backward places like NHS hospitals – was, it seems, triggered by an advertising campaign based on unspecified fears about health. In one ad., an authoritative yet kindly doctor, not unlike the fellow who used to diagnose night starvation, tells us:
In nearly every business organisation a surprisingly large percentage of the employees is suffering from rectal trouble …
Be safe at home and work.
Insist on Scott tissue or Waldorf.
In the 21st century, fear is still used to sell alleged antidotes to the dreaded teenage scourges – acne, halitosis and dandruff – but today’s commercials seem less cruel than the old magazine ads. They certainly offer nothing to match one on display at the museum which, at first glance, looked like an advertisement for a horror movie.
At its centre was a man who was clearly a social outcast – haggard, shamefaced and unable to look the artist in the eye. Only when we read the paragraph below – in which his outrageous conduct is emphasised with capitals – do we learn what he has done.
He took his girl to the swimming bath and gave her ATHLETE’S FOOT.
He was …
A CARRIER.