- Olive begs Dr. Quack, aka Brutus, to cure Popeye's hiccups. But Dr. Quack wants Popeye's Spinach Health Juice off the market and Olive in his clutches.
- Popeye is attracting customers to his medicine show by acting as a one-man band, while Olive Oyl does the barking for him. He's selling Spinach Health Juice, which he tells his audience will bring back their "vim, vigor and vitaliky" and "prevent sunburn, windburn and moonburn." Dr. Quack, aka Brutus, paints pills from his nearby office and overhears the sales pitch. Popeye's health juice could ruin his practice. He decides to put an end to it by creating his own lookalike bottle of Spinach Health Juice, filled with Tabasco sauce, red pepper, ground horseradish, red-hot mustard and green horse liniment. He tricks Popeye into drinking it, which gives Popeye a terrible case of hiccups. Olive begs Dr. Quack to cure Popeye, but Quack is only interested in making the hiccups worse--and in getting Olive in his clutches.—J. Spurlin
- We open with Popeye (voice of Jack Mercer) attracting customers to his medicine show by acting as a one-man band, while Olive Oyl (voice of Mae Questel) does the barking for him. He's selling Spinach Health Juice, which he tells his audience will bring back their "vim, vigor and vitaliky" and "prevent sunburn, windburn and moonburn." Dr. Quack, aka Brutus (voice of Jackson Beck), paints pills from his nearby office and overhears the sales pitch. Popeye's health juice could ruin his practice. He decides to put an end to it by creating his own lookalike bottle of Spinach Health Juice, filled with Tabasco sauce, red pepper, ground horseradish, red-hot mustard and green horse liniment.
He appears in front of Popeye's medicine show and agrees to buy a bottle, but only if Popeye agrees to try it first. He switches the bottle Popeye gives him with the counterfeit, which Popeye happily swigs from. This creates a violent reaction in Popeye who breathes fire and cries for water, which he finds in a decorative fountain. He lifts the entire structure and pours its contents down his throat as the audience boos at him and leaves.
Popeye now has the hiccups. Olive begs the bad Dr. Quack to cure them, which gives Brutus the opportunity for some serious mischief. He gives Popeye some "pills" that are really Mexican jumping beans. Popeye dutifully swallows them and begins jumping involuntarily, which leads him to knock himself out by hitting his head on a high tree branch.
Brutus tries the "scare treatment." He takes Popeye high into the air in an airplane then jumps and parachutes to safety as the plane dives and crashes. Sadly for Brutus, Popeye has survived and he's ruined "a perfectly good plane" to boot.
Brutus takes this "hiccup-condriac" to his office and tries the "paper bag treatment." The paper bag is filled with sneezing powder. Now Popeye is sneezing and hiccuping in alternate bouts. Brutus gives him a sleeping pill, which makes things even worse. Now he's snoring, sneezing and hiccuping.
With every failure, Olive pleads with the doctor to keep trying. Finally, Brutus gives Popeye the "fresh-air treatment." He takes Popeye out of his office in a wheelchair and pushes the chair down a hill where it crashes into the traveling medicine stage. This is Popeye's good luck. A bottle tips over and pours its elixir into the out-cold hero's mouth. Instantly, the sailor-salesman regains his "vim, vigor and vitaliky" and then some.
Popeye races back into the office, where Brutus is hitting on Olive, and socks the master of malpractice on the jaw, which sends him flying into the air and falling on his operating table. He wakes to see Popeye in a surgical mask, holding saws, knives and other sharp instruments as if preparing for surgery. A terrified Brutus uses the table as a go-cart and wheels himself away at top speed.
Back at the medicine stage, Popeye gives Olive an apple. "An apple?" she wonders aloud. Popeye sings, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away/Says Popeye the sailor man." Two toots on his pipe and a jaunty look in his eye ends the episode.
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