This is the song that Bert quoted from his father on 23 Nov 98.

The University of Oxford library holds sheet music; however, these lyrics were copied from Monologues.co.uk:


THE HYPOCHONDRIAC, or, A TRAVELLING DOCTOR'S SHOP
Words and music by Charles Osborne; sung by T. E. Dunville, ©1894.

1. I want to tell you about a pal—a beauty minus paint
Who always thought he'd some sort of serious complaint.
No matter what the remedy, he always bought a dose.
To cure his ills he'd buy blue pills and bolt them by the gross.
He said he'd had the measles bad, the staggers and the ague,
Varicose veins and Chancery Lanes, likewise the cattle plague.
Shivers, and shakes and various aches, and also papshelals,
And I never saw such a man before for taking chemicals.

CHORUS: He wore a belt whenever he felt a pain in his tiddley push,
A chemical vest to save his chest from cannoning off the cush.
He tried quinine and chloride of lime to cure the pippity pop,
Till he became in the What's-a-name a travelling doctor's shop.

2. When the Asiatic cholera came, he swore he'd captured that,
So he bought some vaccination tools and practised on the cat.
To keep the influenza off that came down here and 'gripped' us,
He bathed his feet with turpentine and oil of eucalyptus.
He found a wart of a curious sort that hurt his sit-me-down,
So he bathed it, sir, with tincture of myrrh and wore a padded gown.
I hinted once that I could see his bumps as plain as the Crystal Palace.
He told a quack he'd got an attack of aurora borealis. CHORUS

3. He used to wear a nose machine whenever he went to bed.
He nailed his will to the window-sill in case they found him dead.
He lived on brimstone and treacle just to purify his blood,
And never risked a bath in case he perished in the mud.
One day with a stroke of flibberty-bobs this poor young man was taken,
So off they went and the doctor sent some medicine to be shaken.
The servant girl she could not spell (for she'd been on the boozalem).
She shook him up instead of the stuff, and now he's in Jeruzalem. CHORUS