AN APPLE A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY,
WHAT IF YOU'RE MARRIED TO A DOCTOR?

Although the aphorism, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” is believed by some to hold a core of truth, could it be possible that it was a brilliant marketing plan by apple growers in the 19th century to sell more apples?

If you were married to a doctor, would you abstain from eating apples? Would you choose to eat an apple, and could this indirectly lead to an abstinence of sorts? With respect to eating an apple, can there be a middle ground for the love of the fruit and for the love of a doctor in a marriage?

The original phrase is believed to have been a proverb coined in Pembrokeshire Wales. In an article on wordhistories.net by Pascal Treguer he explained that it was, “First recorded in the late 19th century, it postdates rhyming variants by several years the earliest that I have found is from The Bradford Observer (Bradford, Yorkshire, England) of Thursday 1st March 1866—Pembrokeshire is a county of south-western Wales:

A Pembrokeshire Proverb:

“Eat an apple on going to bed,
And you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread” (wordhistories.net)

It is mentioned in a 2017 article on (npr.org) that the book, Paradise Lost, was written by John Milton and published over 350 years ago. History shows that, “John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual who served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England.” (wikipedia.org/Milton).

Coincidentally, Wales was governed by The Commonwealth of England.

It is stated that Milton’s story “…dramatizes the oldest story in the Bible, whose principal characters we know only too well: God, Adam, Eve, Satan in the form of a talking snake — and an apple. Except, of course, that Genesis never names the apple but simply refers to "the fruit." (npr.org). It could be said that the story reveals the apple as being something desirable.

Interestingly, if you count back 350 years from 2017 it takes you to the year 1667. Could this story have planted a seed in the minds of the early 16th century apple growers that one day their desirable apples would dominate the market if their descendants created a phrase that could go early century viral? Was John Milton cultivating a relationship between the apple growers of Wales and the future retailers of England?

A brief look at the Welsh history and their apple crops will show that the Llwyd Hanner Goch apple was developed in the sixteenth century, sometime between 1501 and 1600. There are nearly two dozen ancient apple varieties on record. (wikipedia.org/Welsh).

With a country that’s rich in apple history “Malus domestica,” it seems logical that they would have purposefully created a marketing campaign early in England’s and Europe’s history to sell more of their apples. (wikipedia.org/Apple).

To answer the question if the phrase is actually true, it mentions in a study that with “8,399 participants who answered a questionnaire” that there wasn’t a significant difference in the amount of people who went to the doctor that ate apples and those who didn’t eat apples.

Data does show that “The daily apple eaters were also more likely to successfully avoid prescription medication use (47.7% versus 41.8%) – and this difference survived statistical analysis. The association between eating an apple a day and keeping the pharmacist away, then, was a statistically significant finding, whereas keeping the doctor away failed to hold true.” (medicalnewstoday.com).

As far as any major health benefits, in another study in 2015 it states that, “Other than for a moderate amount of carbohydrates as fructose and dietary fiber, a medium-size apple (182 g with skin) supplies 95 calories and 14% of the Daily Value for vitamin C, but otherwise has a low content of micronutrients.” (wikipedia.org/An_ apple).

In the 16th century, around the year 1595, Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. If he had written a Sonnet, something similar about the love of an apple and a doctor, maybe he might have penned a few words that read as follows.

What’s in a fruit?
That which we call an apple,
by any other name would taste as sweet.

Alas, if in matrimony a doctor you have wed,
and still you bear a yearning desire
for the apple that tastes so sweet,
then let gratitude abound
for the cultivators of the earth
who grow this fine fruit
and bestow upon those
your thankfulness for the studies that reveal
that the desirableness of this object
doth not keep away the doctor
with whom you are in union.

One can have their apple and eat it too.



Referenced Articles

https://wordhistories.net/2019/05/24/apple-keeps-doctor-away/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/04/30/526069512/paradise-lost-how-the-apple-became-the-forbidden-fruit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_apples

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/291683#Avoiding-the-use-of-health-care-services

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_apple_a_day_keeps_the_doctor_away