Annotation:Mad Doctor (The)

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MAD DOCTOR, THE. English, Country Dance Tune or Jig (6/8 time). A Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. William Battie was a prestigious "mad-doctor" of the mid-eighteenth century who was instrumental in making the role of the mad-doctor respectable. He "rose to become President of the Royal College of Physicians" (Porter 1987, 167). An admirer of Locke, Battie advocated a "reasoned therapeutic optimism" in place of drugs, stressing the need for strict, humane management and declaring that "the Regimen in this is perhaps more important than any distemper" (quoted in Porter 1987, p. 207)

There is a "Medecin Extravagante (Le), or The Mad Doctor" in Thomas Hurst's Cotillons, Made Plain and Easy (London, 1775), but it is a different tune.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Randall (Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year 1771), 1771; No. 14.

Recorded sources:

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