Doctor Curmudgeon® Where Mainstream Media Rarely Treads

By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman, is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist

It was just an upstart at first.

Born on July 17, 1841.

On that date, a marvelous, audacious, weekly magazine appeared on newsstands in London.

It was christened at birth, “Punch London Charivari.”

“Punch” pointed its satirical gaze on British life.

This delightful humor magazine was born in the brains of Henry Mayhew and a wood-engraver by the name of Ebenezer Landells. These gentlemen poured in an initial investment of twenty five pounds in order to publish their creation.

Why was this delicious pasquinade called “Punch?” It appears that the magazine’s name represents a popular puppet, Punch, of Punch and Judy fame; a marionette show with a great deal of slapstick.

To quote from the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica, the character Punch is described:

Punch, in full Punchinello, Italian Pulcinella, hooknosed, humpbacked character, the most popular of marionettes and glove puppets and the chief figure in the Punch-and-Judy puppet show. Brutal, vindictive, and deceitful, he is usually at odds with authority.

And a charivari is some sort of mock event, with loud discordant music.

In existence for more than one hundred and fifty years, this curmudgeonly publication had a coterie of superb writers, such as: William Thackeray, P.G. Wodehouse, and A. A. Milne. It was crowned with some of the finest satirical cartoonists of the day

Dear old “Punch” could be found stashed in the libraries of cabinet ministers, diplomats and, it was whispered, in the private rooms of royalty.

An early issue, “Punch” displayed its innate irreverence with a cartoon and article about an exhibition of fresco designs planned for the Westminster palace. “Punch” attacked this excruciating waste of public money, at a time when London was a miasma of slums, workhouses, poverty and disastrous health conditions.

It was replete with political debate and, in the Victorian Era, it became a weekly magazine of wholesome humor and satire that was quite popular with the Victorians

Its final issue was in 1992.

With the demise of “Punch,” we must keep in mind that there is always room for elegant, witty, social and political satires…especially today. If those architects of “Punch Charivari” were with us now, what juicy weekly journals they could create!

Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.

Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon

Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.

SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”

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