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''George's Marvellous Medicine'' (known as ''George's Marvelous Medicine'' in the US) is a
book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physi ...
written by
Roald Dahl and illustrated by
Quentin Blake
Sir Quentin Saxby Blake, (born 16 December 1932) is an English cartoonist, caricaturist, illustrator and children's writer. He has illustrated over 300 books, including 18 written by Roald Dahl, which are among his most popular works. For his ...
. First published by
Jonathan Cape in 1981, it features George Kranky, an eight-year-old boy who concocts his own miracle elixir to replace his tyrannical grandmother's regular prescription medicine.
Being a medical expert was one of what Dahl called his "dreams of glory": he had enormous respect for doctors and particularly those who pioneered new treatments. He dedicated the book to "doctors everywhere".
An audio reading of it was released with
Richard E. Grant narrating. In 2003, it was listed at number 134 on the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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The Big Read
The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three-quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel of all time. The year-long survey wa ...
'' poll.
Plot
While eight-year-old George Kranky's parents are out grocery shopping, his elderly maternal grandmother bosses him around and bullies him. She intimidates him by saying that she likes to eat
insects
Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of j ...
and he wonders briefly if she's a
witch
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have us ...
. To punish her for her regular abuse, he decides to make a magic medicine to replace her old prescription one. He collects a variety of ingredients from around the family farm including
deodorant
A deodorant is a substance applied to the body to prevent or mask body odor due to bacterial breakdown of perspiration or vaginal secretions, for example in the armpits, groin, or feet. A subclass of deodorants, called antiperspirants, prevents ...
and
shampoo
Shampoo () is a hair care product, typically in the form of a Viscosity, viscous liquid, that is used for cleaning hair. Less commonly, shampoo is available in solid bar format. Shampoo is used by applying it to wet hair, massaging the product ...
from the bathroom, floor
polish from the laundry room,
horseradish
Horseradish (''Armoracia rusticana'', syn. ''Cochlearia armoracia'') is a perennial plant of the family Brassicaceae (which also includes mustard, wasabi, broccoli, cabbage, and radish). It is a root vegetable, cultivated and used worldwi ...
sauce and
gin from the kitchen, animal medicines,
engine oil
Motor oil, engine oil, or engine lubricant is any one of various substances used for the lubrication of internal combustion engines. They typically consist of base oils enhanced with various additives, particularly antiwear additives, detergen ...
and
anti-freeze from the garage, and brown
paint to mimic the colour of the original medicine.
After cooking the ingredients in the kitchen, George gives it as medicine to his grandmother, who grows as tall as the house, bursting through the roof. When she doesn't believe it was him who made her do so, he proves it to her by feeding the medicine to one of his father's chickens, which grows ten times its original size. As they return home, Mr. and Mrs. Kranky can't believe their eyes when they see the giant chicken and grandmother. Mr. Kranky grows very excited at the thought of rearing giant animals. He has George feed the medicine to the rest of the farm's animals, causing them to become giants as well. However, his grandmother begins complaining about being ignored and stuck in the house, so Mr. Kranky hires a crane to remove her from it. Her extreme height has her sleeping in the barn for the next few nights.
The following morning, Mr. Kranky is still excited about George's medicine and announces that he and George shall make gallons of it to sell to farmers around the world, which would make his family rich. George attempts to recreate it but is unable to remember all the ingredients. The second version makes a chicken's legs grow extremely long, and the third elongates another one's neck to bizarre proportions. The fourth has the opposite effect of the first and makes animals shrink. George's grandmother, now even more angry because she has to sleep in the barn, storms over and starts complaining loudly that she's once again sick of being ignored. She sees the cup of medicine in George's hand and erroneously mistakes it for tea. Much to his and Mrs. Kranky's horror, and Mr. Kranky's delight, she drinks the entire cup and shrinks so much that she vanishes completely. At first, Mrs. Kranky is shocked, confused, and distraught about her mother's sudden and very strange disappearance, but soon accepts that she was becoming a nuisance anyway. In the last page, George is left to think about the implications of his actions, feeling as though they had granted him access to the edge of a magic world.
Safety concerns
Though it was a popular book for reading to children in
primary school
A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary e ...
, great care was taken by teachers to warn children to not try and recreate the medicine at home due to the hazardous nature of some of its ingredients. There is a disclaimer warning before the story stating "Warning to Readers: Do not try to make George's Marvellous Medicine yourselves at home. It could be dangerous."
[ ] In 2020, a team of British researchers performed a toxicological investigation into the potion and all 34 of its ingredients. They reported in the ''
BMJ'' that if ingested, it would cause vomiting, kidney injury, convulsions, and other severe health problems, including "the most likely clinical outcome", death. "The overall outcome for Grandma would be fatal catastrophic physiological collapse," they wrote.
Ingredients
The original ingredients are as follows:
*Toothpaste
*Golden gloss hair shampoo
*Superfoam shaving soap
*Vitamin enriched face cream
*Scarlet nail varnish
*Hair remover
*Dishworth's dandruff cure
*Brillident false teeth cleaner
*Nevermore ponging deodorant
*Liquid paraffin
*Helga's hairset
*Perfume: 'Flower of turnips'
*Pink plaster powder
*Lipsticks
*Superwhite washing powder
*Waxwell floor polish
*Flea powder for dogs
*Canary seed
*Dark tan shoe polish
*Curry powder
*Mustard powder
*'Extra hot' chilli sauce
*Black peppercorns
*Horseradish sauce
*Gin
*Fowl pest powder to mix with feed
*Purple pills for hoarse horses
*Thick yellowish liquid for cows
*Sheep dip
*Pig pills for swine sickness
*Engine oil
*Antifreeze
*Grease
*Dark brown gloss paint
In the cookbook
Roald Dahl's Completely Revolting Recipes, collaborated on by
Felicity Dahl and chefs Josie Fison and Lori-Ann Newman, George's medicine was adapted into "George's Marvellous Medicine Chicken Soup", the ingredients of which included chicken, onions, mushrooms, leeks, and tarragon.
Influence
Dahl was influenced by
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequ ...
's ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creature ...
'', with the "Drink Me" episode inspiring a scene in ''George's Marvellous Medicine'' where the tyrannical grandmother drinks a potion concocted by George and is blown up to the size of a farmhouse.
Television version
Rik Mayall
Richard Michael Mayall (7 March 1958 – 9 June 2014) was an English actor, stand-up comedian and writer. He formed a close partnership with Ade Edmondson while they were students at Manchester University and was a pioneer of alternative ...
read the book for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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...
's ''