There was a time when people spoke of agues

There was a time when people spoke of agues

In some mysterious kind of way

When a disease was visited upon us

A province of the gods

Punishment for an original sin

The stuff of nonsense

Needing miracles and sacrifice.

A red-nosed middle-aged man with broken veins

Rosacea and gout

Crawling home with a toothache

Drunk as a skunk

In a vain attempt to drown the pain

Before falling over his sofa,

(A Chesterfield)

Knocking it out in the fall

Praising god

For the relief of it all.

Bloodletting was part of a

Noble health plan

Grey-faced patients in darkened rooms

Consumptive invalids

Patiently waiting

In cold rooms with a through-draft,

Pale-faced women

Wearing whalebone

Barely able to breathe

Decamped to

Bognor Regis for the salt-air cures

Fainting from lack of care

Old before bedtime.

Too fragile to be alive

Growing weaker with bleeding

Some said a cold needed feeding

Nobody worried about cleanliness

Rolling in the dirt

An everyday occurrence

Especially when inebriated

As high as the sky

Sipping laudanum

Smoking a cigar

Rolled on a virgin’s thigh

Or so they said

Maybe it was something I read

Drinking gin like water

It was safer

When the water was full of bacteria.

Children died of Diptheria

Chicken Pox and Whooping Cough

The needle begat the devil's poison

Until the death rate fell

So many people, fit and well

Happy to pay for good healthcare with their taxes

Mortality rates fell through the floor

Snake-oil salesmen were shown the door

Whatever happened to the anti-vaxers

In the olden days?

Perhaps they all sucked it up and changed their ways

Let us pray we can keep polio and measles

At bay

It is the least we can do

For the children.