This week, we're heading to the musical pharmacy, with a show all about medicine, potions, poisons, and drugs we're calling "Medicinally Speaking."
Did you know...
- The final two movements of the Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz were the result of an opium-induced fever dream!
- Robert Schumann injured his hand using a mechanical finger-stretcher called a Dactylion. To treat his injury, he tried mercury, herbal bandages, and putting his hand into the abdominal cavity of a freshly-slaughtered animal.
- The love potion from Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner was the same love potion that is central to the plot of Gaetano Donizetti's The Elixir of Love!
- The text William Schuman's Mail-Order Madrigals comes from an 1897 Sears-Roebuck catalog, including a remedy for so-called "female weakness" called "Doctor Worden's Female Pills."
See the full playlist below.
And don't forget to listen to this week's podcast!