What better way to convey ideas than through images? Caricature became hugely popular because it bridged both the language and the illiteracy gap better than the written word. Due to technological advances, caricature was also well suited to effect a rapid response to topical themes and events of the day. With the invention of lithography just before the turn of the nineteenth century, images were drawn directly on the lithography stone, rather than given to an engraver. The elimination of this extra step plus the increasingly mechanized printing press resulted in a visual form that could be published quickly.

Caricature can take many forms. It can be biting political satire or a commentary on the current social scene. It can mock one particular person, a social class, a public event, or an idea. Some of the images are as easily understood today as when they were first published. The twenty-first century finds people grappling with the same family matters, money issues, and emotions as their earlier counterparts, and a person facing a dose of unpleasant medicine today will make the same grimace as did a patient 200 years ago. However, other caricatures are packed with meaning directed specifically to the audience of the period and are less easily interpreted. The superficial implication might be obvious, but the more subtle political or social significance and thus the actual reason the artist drew the cartoon is sometimes lost on a modern viewer.

Parisians were attentive to visible clues of class, occupation, and character. This interest was fostered by late eighteenth-century theories of physiognomy, the technique of discovering temperament and character from the outward appearance, and phrenology, the study of the conformation of the skull as indicative of mental faculties and traits of character. ²

Ma foi, tout est pour le mieux! Edme Jean Pigal, (Mœurs parisiennes. No. 29.) Lith. de Langlumé, chez Gihaut et Martinet.

Edme Jean Pigal was one of many caricaturists who drew scenes of the day focusing on contemporary customs and sights along the streets of Paris. His early lithographs were vignettes featuring one or two characters, with little or no background.³

This image is number 29 in the series of 100 lithographs entitled, “Mœurs parisiennes” or “Parisian manners.” It shows two lower class men with the caption, “After all, everything is for the best.” The hunched man on the right does not look particularly prosperous himself, but is making a contribution to the character who has one shortened leg. Unlike most interchanges between beggar and benefactor, the encounter is a pleasant one in which each person faces the other with a smile. The two are eye-to-eye because of the giver’s humped back and the beggar’s elevated shoe.

The beggar’s shortened leg possibly resulted from polio, a primary cause of permanent disability before the advent of a vaccine in the mid 1950s. One of polio’s symptoms is paralysis. Any combination of limbs might be involved, but the most commonly affected extremity is one leg. An Egyptian stela, dated to a period ranging from 1580 BC to 1350 BC, shows a crippled man with one shortened and withered leg and suggests the probable presence of polio since ancient times.⁴

La moitie du monde se moque de l’autre, ou la pelle qui se mocque du fourgon. Lith. de Langlumé r. de l’Abbaye N, Noël rue st. Jacques N 16, Noël et Dauty éditeur Galerie de Nemours Palais Royal.

Caricatures sometimes illustrate a saying or proverb. The French proverb about the shovel that teases the fire-iron or poker corresponds well to the English adage of the pot calling the kettle black. This caricature has the caption, “One half of the world makes fun of the other, or the shovel that teases the fire-iron.” The two humpbacked, surly-looking figures strike confrontational poses. The character on the right sits under a sign that suggests he is a wily shoe shiner. The tools of his occupation surround him: an extra pair of shoes propped by his wooden seat, a brush, and a mug handy for storing shoe paste. With his outstretched arm and accusing finger he harasses the other man who aggressively responds to the attack. To further emphasize his point, the artist positions a snarling dog behind each figure. The dogs mimic the men in both expression and coloring.

Misére, hypocrisie, convoitise. Misery, hypocrisy, covetou[s]ness. Grandville, (Les Métamorphoses du Jour. No. 14.), Lith. de Langlume. chez Bulla, rue St. Jacques, No. 38. Et chez Martinet, rue du Coq.

“Misére, hypocrisie, convoitise,” belongs to “Les Métamorphoses du Jour” or “Today’s Metamorphoses” series by Grandville, a pseudonym for Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard.
This series appeared originally in album form in 1829 and was Grandville’s first major success.⁵
Grandville created lithographs so that the white areas would lend themselves to watercolors painted by a coloriste, generally a poorly paid woman.⁶

A master of transformation, Grandville placed animal heads on human bodies to exhibit people’s animalistic characteristics and to satirize human airs and posturing. In this print a mouse on his deathbed represents misery. Using a handkerchief to wipe his eyes, the cat pretends to grieve. In actuality, he is a symbol of hypocrisy as cats are more likely to facilitate the death of mice than to mourn their loss. The three characters standing to the right look like crows and represent covetousness. Crows are scavengers and eat everything from bugs and berries to roadkill and stolen eggs. They also capture and eat small animals, such as the mouse in Grandville’s picture. The three crows have distinctive dress and, from left to right, probably signify the church, the nobility, and the state.⁷ All of these, like the crow searching for carrion, seem to be waiting for the mouse to die so they can swoop in and take the possessions and property of the helpless victim.

• Medicine in France

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

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It was a satirist’s job to provide humorous, and often biting, commentary on all the subjects of the day. Because health issues were so prevalent and Britons were so obsessed with health, the caricaturist found a wealth of material to use in examining disease, illness, medicine, and unorthodox healing methods in nineteenth-century Britain. The general public could easily identify with the medically-related cartoons the satirists produced; who hadn’t felt sick, experienced the side effects of the popular medicines, or grown frustrated with the inefficacy of medical treatments and the high cost of medicine? With wit and cynical observation, the caricaturists elevated health issues to comical proportions, and the laughter their cartoons generated helped allay the public’s anxiety over their physical well-being.

Very Ill! Anon, published by J. L. Marks, 27 Artillery Street, Bishopsgate, London.

Most Britons could relate to the suffering of the individual in this satire. The artist conveys the ravaging effects of illness by drawing haggard lines and a frown on the character’s face. The man is so sick he remains in his nightclothes, and the stubble on his face indicates that he has been ill for days. His long limp fingers hold a cup of tea that may or may not restore his health.

D_n it Sir, I wish you would blow your Nose. William Heath, published by T. McLean, 26 Haymarket, London, May 12, 1830.

A common comedic technique of English caricaturists was to grossly exaggerate facial and physical characteristics, especially the nose and belly. In this 1830 etching, William Heath draws the stomach, and particularly the nose, to comical proportions. The cartoon is a study of two physically opposite characters sitting across from each other in a small, cramped room. The gentleman on the left is long and lean, and possesses a beautifully proportioned face. His antithesis, the person on the right, is short and obese, and sports a huge and grotesque nose. The thin man does his best to read his newspaper, but the other man’s bulbous nose hovering directly over the newspaper, distracts him. The stout fellow evidently has the sniffles causing the thin man to quip, “D_n it Sir—I wish you would blow your Nose.” The rotund character replies with the punch line, “Blow it your self—it is as near you as it is to me.”

A Cure for a Cold: Here’s a go; I must keep my feet in hotwater 20 minutes Take two quarts of gruel wrap my head in flanel and Tallow my nose. Anon, published by G. Tregear, 123 Cheapside, London, 1833.

In this print, the main figure follows popular medical advice to cure himself of a severe cold. The most common medical reference guide found in many Briton’s homes was Domestic Medicine, written by a Scottish physician, William Buchan (1729-1805). Buchan wrote the book in order to, “render the medical art more generally useful, by showing people what is in their own power both with respect to the prevention and cure of diseases.”³ Domestic Medicine, first published in 1769, ran through 142 English editions and was reportedly used in poorer Scottish families until 1927.⁴

Buchan theorized that colds were the “effect of an obstructed perspiration.”⁵ The caricature demonstrates the different ways to induce sweating to relieve the symptoms of a cold. First, the man dresses warmly. He wears a huge bulky coat over his nightshirt, ties a scarf around his neck, and wraps his head in flannel. Buchan also suggested, “bathing the feet and legs every night in warm water” to “restore the perspiration.”⁶ In this print, the man plans on soaking his feet in hot water for 20 minutes. He also stirs a bowlful of gruel. Buchan instructed reducing the quantities of solid food, and instead suggested light bread-pudding, veal or chicken broth, and gruel. He wrote:

His drink may be water-gruel sweetened with a little honey; an infusion of balm, or linseed sharpened with the juice of orange or lemon; a decoction of barley and liquorice with tamarinds, or any other cool, diluting, acid liquor. ABOVE all, his supper should be light; as small posset, or water-gruel sweetened with honey, and a little toasted bread in it. ⁷

Buchan doesn’t mention rubbing tallow, an animal fat, on the nose. Perhaps tallow was thought to assist the opening of the sinus cavities and provide relief for a stuffy nose.

Head Ache. George Cruikshank, published by G. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s St., London, February 12, 1819.

Another common technique of satirists was to blame physical suffering on sinister beings. Goblins, demons, and imps were drawn as energetic creatures that relished inflicting pain on humans. In the 1819 caricature by George Cruikshank entitled “Head ache,” six demons are the root cause of the main character’s misery. The victim’s excruciating headache, perhaps a migraine, has left him weary and lifeless as he sits in a chair in front of a roaring fire. His head hurts so badly that his eyes have rolled back into his head, revealing only the whites of his eyes. With gleeful enthusiasm the devilish characters are working hard at their gruesome task. A demon swings a large mallet to drive a stake into the man’s skull while another drills a terrifying corkscrew device (an enlarged version of a trephine instrument) into his head. In a previously made hole, another demon pours a liquid substance into his brain. Yet another stands on the man’s arm ready to strike with a spear. Cruikshank amusingly captures how noises can further intensify the trials of a headache sufferer by drawing an imp, sitting on the tortured character’s shoulder, obnoxiously singing into one ear while another imp blows a horn directly into the other ear.

• Heroic Medicine

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

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Caricature by definition is a representation in which the subject’s distinctive features or peculiarities are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic or grotesque effect. Nineteenth-century medicine provided caricaturists with a wealth of material. Artists humorously exaggerated medical conditions and physical characteristics. Bulbous noses, protruding stomachs, and hunched backs were some of the more common features drawn to extraordinary proportions. Bizarre treatments, massive doses of pills, and excessive bloodletting, prescribed by trained physicians and quack doctors alike, were all lampooned. Suffering and discomfort from disease and the patient’s reaction to medical treatment were also fodder for the satirist’s pen.

While some caricatures were straightforward in their message, others contained yet another layer of meaning. Medical conditions could symbolize failed interpersonal relationships, national political affairs, and everything in between. Ailments caused by the follies of fashion, such as ill-fitting footwear or constricting corsets, inspired many drawings. Artists also directly linked illness to excesses in nineteenth-century social life, particularly over-consumption of food and alcohol.

The 37 caricatures displayed in this exhibit are divided into two groups: English and French. The English prints are predominately drawn by two of the more famous British caricaturists, James Gillray and George Cruikshank. The French caricatures include artwork by J.J. Grandville, Louis-Léopold Boilly, and Edme Jean Pigal.

Credits

Mary Wagner donated the caricatures in this exhibit to Historical Collections and Services, The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. Her husband, the late Robert R. Wagner, M.D., collected these when he was a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute for Medical Research in London from 1950 to 1951. Wagner was Chair of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Virginia from 1967 to 1994, and Director of the UVa Cancer Center from 1983 to 1993. Thanks to Mary Wagner’s generosity, the caricatures recently have been professionally treated, preserved, and reframed. The originals are on display in Historical Collections and Services and in the Department of Microbiology in the Robert R. Wagner Conference Room. These nineteenth-century satirical prints will thus continue to delight future generations.

This exhibit was written by Sara Huyser and Janet Pearson, members of the staff of Historical Collections and Services at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia. Steve Stedman designed the Web exhibit. Special thanks to Joan Echtenkamp Klein and Andrew Sallans for their assistance.

NOTICE: All images in this exhibit are the property of Historical Collections & Services of the Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia. Please contact a member of Historical Collections for permission to reproduce in any fashion images from the exhibit or to make comments or suggestions.

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Grandville is the name used by Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard, a caricaturist, lithographer, and illustrator who was born in Nancy and moved to Paris in the late 1820s. After the French Revolution of 1830 he contributed over 200 designs to two periodicals edited by Charles Philipon, La Caricature, a scathing weekly periodical, and Le Charivari, a daily paper.²⁹

His political satires harshly criticized the new government as being no better than the government it replaced. When increasingly draconian censorship laws caused the closure of La Caricature in 1835, Grandville turned his talents to illustrating books. He created the drawings for Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift and Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. He produced over 3,000 prints, engravings, and lithographs during his career.³⁰ His personal life was marred by misfortunes, including the deaths of his three children and first wife. Affected by depression after his third child died, Grandville seemingly was also afflicted with a throat infection and died at a private medical clinic in March 1847.³¹

He wrote his own epitaph, “Here lies Grandville; he gave life to everything and made everything move and speak. The one thing is, he didn’t know how to make his own way.”³²

Les Métamorphoses du Jour. No. 14. Misére, hypocrisie, convoitise. Misery, hypocrisy, covetou[s]ness. Lith. de Langlume. Chez Bulla, rue St. Jacques, No. 38. Et chez Martinet, rue du Coq. (10 5/8″h x 14″w)

Grandville, Les Métamorphoses du Jour. No. 11., Arrivez, arrivez, mourrice. _ Dieux comme y Ressemble a Mosieu! Come, Come nurse. _ Good Good! what a likeness. Lith. de Langlume, Chez Bulla, rue St. Jacques No. 38. et chez Martinet, rue du Coq. (10 7/8″h x 14 1/4″w)

Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761-1845)

Louis-Léopold Boilly was born in La Bassée, a village in northeastern France. He moved to Paris in 1786 where he successfully began his illustrious career as a painter and lithographer from the end of the Ancien Régime into the early July Monarchy. He is credited with drawing the first dated French lithograph in 1802 and depicted over 5,000 heads in his artwork.³³ Boilly adapted to the rapidly evolving political conditions, and his broad range of work suggests that he was aware of what appealed to the urban collector of the post-Revolutionary period.³⁴ Near the age of retirement, he sold his painting business and became an investor in mortgage loans.³⁵

Consultation de Medecins, 1760. L. Boilly, G. lith. de Delpech. (12 1/8″h x 9 1/4″w)

Consultation de Mèdecins. 1823. 16, L. Boilly, G. lith. de Delpech. (12 3/8″h x 9″h)

Les Bossus. L. Boilly, 1827. G. lith. de Delpech, 1827. (11 1/2″h x 8 1/2″w)

Le Neuvieme Mois. L. Boilly. (11 1/4″h x 9 1/2″w)

Edme Jean Pigal (1798-1873)

Edme Jean Pigal was a Parisian painter and lithographer. He created prints satirizing customs and social types, making fun of both the lower and middle classes. He had caricatures published in La Silhouette, La Caricature, and Le Charivari, but unlike Grandville, was an irregular contributor and was not noticeably political. An accurate chronology of Pigal’s lithographs is not possible, but generally his backgrounds became less bare over time. Those done to sell as single sheets were usually hand-colored. In the late 1830s Pigal did less lithography and more paintings, concentrating on religious and historical themes. He also did commissioned work for the Ministry of the Interior.³⁶

Mœurs parisiennes. No. 29. Pigal, Chez Gihaut et Martinet, Lith. de Langlumé, Ma foi, tout est pour le mieux! (14 1/4″h x 10 3/4″w)

Scènes de Société. No. 16. Pigal, Chez Gihaut et Martinet, Lith. de Langlumé, Ça va mal!! (13″h x 10″w)

L Noël

En gouterai je? L Noël, Lithog: de F. Noël. Publié par Giraldon – Bovinet et Compie, Mds d’estampes, Commissionnaires, rue Pavée St. André, No. 5. (13″h x 9 3/4″w)

Unknown

La Métempsycose réalisée. No. 2. Mais docteur je cuis dans mon bain. á Bruxelles chez Daem[ll?], et á Paris, chez Méant, fils, rue St. Antoine, No. 9. (7 7/8″h x 9 5/8″w)

A. D. [?], Noël rue St. Jacques N 16, Lith. de Langlumé r. de l’Abbaye N, La moitie du monde se moque de l’autre, Ou la pelle qui se mocque du fourgon. Noël et Dauty éditeur Galerie de Nemours Palais Royal. (13 5/8″h x 10 1/4″w)

Genty, Editeur; Rue St. Jacques, No 33. Béraud, Ah!… aye!… le cas est pressant. (11 1/2″h x 9″w)

• Wet Nursing
• Footnotes & Resources

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

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Le Neuvieme Mois. Louis-Léopold Boilly, (no printer’s marks)

The next two prints give very different views of domestic life. “Le Neuvieme Mois” or “The Ninth Month” by Louis-Léopold Boilly is an example of genre painting, which by definition depicts types of people rather than a particular person, generally in an unpretentious setting. Boilly captures the sentiment of an expectant couple. The mother-to-be sits in a chair, and while the man’s lower body is not visible, it appears that he is kneeling beside her. The future father is attentive as he rests one arm on the woman’s abdomen and wraps another tenderly around her shoulder. Leaning towards each other, their eyes lock on the other’s face, to the exclusion of all else.

Arrivez, arrivez, nourrice. _ Dieux comme y ressemble a Mosieu! Come, Come nurse. _ Good Good! what a likeness. Grandville, (Les Métamorphoses du Jour. No. 11.), Lith. de Langlume, chez Bulla, rue St. Jacques No. 38. et chez Martinet, rue du Coq.

Boilly’s sweet, sentimental picture contrasts with Grandville’s satirical caricature, another scene from his “Les Métamorphoses du jour.” The father figure, characterized as a stag with prominent antlers, holds an infant with the head of a baby bird, its beak wide open. The father exclaims, “what a likeness,” as he prepares to hand the baby to the goat-headed nurse he has summoned.

Grandville’s decision to transform his infant into a bird was a calculated one and emphasized a chief characteristic of newborns. A baby bird grows rapidly, but when hatched, its crop is small and has limited food-holding capacity. To accommodate rapid growth, feeding must be frequent. Baby songbirds in captivity need to be hand fed about every 45 minutes from six in the morning until eight at night for four to six weeks.²³

Early writing about infant feeding frequently gave advice about the selection of a suitable wet nurse, indicating this practice had been utilized by those with enough money to pay for it for many centuries. In eighteenth-century Europe, anti-wet nursing literature expressed concern for the well-being of the babies being farmed out, but not much consideration for the offspring of the wet nurses who were often neglected or even permitted to die to make way for a paying consumer. Despite exposure to these anti-wet nursing pamphlets, the French employed more wet nurses in the nineteenth century than any other country, and the practice was common in all but the very lowest socioeconomic class.²⁴ In the countryside a wet nurse would free up an able-bodied woman to work in the field. In the cities a woman working in a factory could not take time off or bring a baby to work so was forced to choose between either hiring a wet nurse or abandoning the child. A wet nurse preferred employment with an aristocratic or bourgeois family, such as Grandville illustrates, because working conditions were more pleasant and the pay was greater.

In 1801 the state passed a law assuming the financial responsibility for abandoned children.²⁵ Foundling hospitals or hospices for children were established in large towns and employed wet nurses to nurse multiple children at the hospice itself or, more frequently, care for them in the nurses’ own homes. The hospice in Paris relocated 5,000 babies a year with rural women, who lived up to 50 miles from the city. Travel on deeply rutted roads during all seasons and all weather took up to a week with one stop during the day to feed and change the infants. After 12 to 14 hours of travel time, the wet nurses stayed at an inn where the hospice paid for their evening meal of soup that supplemented the four pounds of bread they were given when starting their journey. Deposited not at home, but at a department office, wet nurses could face a 30-mile walk. It is not surprising that abandoned French children taken to the home of a wet nurse suffered a 30-54 percent mortality rate between 1815 and 1885. What is surprising is that more babies survived in rural homes than in hospices.²⁶

Because of the high rate of infant abandonment and the state’s assumption of responsibility to care for foundlings, French institutions experimented with alternate methods of feeding infants. If there were not enough wet nurses to feed the hospice babies, animals’ milk, generally cow’s or goat’s, was used.²⁷ An image from 1816 in London’s Wellcome Institute Library shows two women holding an infant who is nursing directly from a goat. This method was utilized when the supply of wet nurses was inadequate, and also to feed syphilitic children.²⁸ Grandville’s choice of a goat’s head for his nurse is as fitting as his selection of a bird’s head for the baby. The stag father’s comment, “what a likeness,” refers to both the nurse and the baby!

• Public Health
• French Artists

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

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Quack doctors cloaked themselves and their cures in an aura of respectability. Many quacks were not the necessarily ill-bred, uneducated, ignorant, or inept imposters the satirist wished to portray. Some possessed formal training (or even had a diploma in medicine) and had a vast array of experience in treating illness. They also appealed to the general public because they “championed novelty” in their products during an age of science and technology. Finally, the quacks successfully promoted themselves through self-advertisement, particularly by publishing tracts and flyers and taking out classified advertisements.¹⁵

Perkins Patent Tractors

One of the more popular new-fangled treatments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the Perkins Patent Tractors. Their creator, Elisha Perkins (1741-1799), attended Yale University and was a physician in Connecticut. Drawing upon experiments done with “animal electricity” by an Italian scientist Luigi Galvani, Perkins theorized that redirecting the body’s natural electricity could draw out pain and disease. In a furnace at his home, Perkins fashioned brass and iron rods measuring about four inches. The rods had one flat side and one round side with one blunt end and one pointed end. The practitioner held the rods in his hand and rested the point of the rods on the skin. Then he stroked or drew the tractors over the unhealthy area of the body to attract and draw out affliction.

Perkins’s son, Benjamin, a Yale graduate, moved to London, England to promote his father’s amazing invention. He set up shop at No. 28, Leicester Square, the former home of the famed father of scientific surgery, John Hunter. (Perkins mentioned this fact in his advertisements to add further credibility to his magical product.) In a May 1801 advertisement in The Times, Perkins charged “5 guineas” for the tractors, which he claimed worked “600 cures.”¹⁶ In November of that year, James Gillray published an amusing print entitled, “Metallic Tractors,” that demonstrated his “enduring contempt for humbugs and publicity seekers.”¹⁷ It appears that Perkins found great satisfaction in the caricature, as he wrote a thank-you note to Gillray and requested the print be exhibited in other shops. Any publicity was favorable publicity. By this time, however, the popularity of Perkinism was waning. A tract published in 1800 declared that in a scientific study by Dr. John Haygarth wooden tractors produced as many cures as metallic tractors.¹⁸

Metallic-Tractors. James Gillray, published by H. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s Street, London, November 11, 1801.

In this particularly amusing cartoon, James Gillray comments on the lengths people will go to cure affliction, even enlisting the aid of well-known quacks. In this case the patient suffers from a severely reddened and bulbous nose. The picture drawn behind the man is of a cherub straddling a barrel while holding a glass in one hand and a bottle in the other. On the table is a bottle of brandy—perhaps a commentary by Gillray that alcohol consumption contributed to the patient’s rhinophyma.

The patient has succumbed to the lure of the advertisements of the famed Benjamin Perkins in the local newspapers. The paper on the table states, “just arrived from America, the Rod of Aesculapius. Perkinson in all his Glory—being a certain Cure for all Disorders, Red Noses, Gouty Toes, Windy Bowels, Broken Legs, Hump Backs. Just discover’d, the Grand Secret of the Philosopher’s Stone with the true way of turning all Metals into Gold. Pro bono publico.”

Gillray’s practitioner is a sinister fellow—the man’s braid juts out like a devil’s tail. He sticks one tractor in his mouth, freeing up both of his hands. One hand holds onto the patient’s head, pushing off the man’s wig to reveal a completely bald head. The other hand directs electricity through the tractor onto the man’s red bulbous nose. Flames spurt out of the patient’s nostrils and nose. The patient grips his hands in tight fists and clenches his teeth, demonstrating that the treatment is painful.

Morison’s Vegetable Pills

One of the most famous, controversial, and successful “quack” doctors in nineteenth-century England was James Morison (1770-1840). He appealed to the general public because of the missionary-like zeal in which he opposed “orthodox” medicine; in particular, he attacked physicians’ excessive fees and toxic medicine. Like other well-known quacks, he organized his own medical school choosing the conservative and respectable name, The British College of Health. So, in contrast to regular doctors, he named his practitioners “hygeists.” In the Hygeian system, Morison wrote, “all maladies arise from impurity of the blood, though they may show themselves under various forms.”¹⁹ The only cure to this imperfect and impure circulation of the blood was his very own Morison Vegetable Pills. The purgation by vegetable pills—a laxative made from aloes, jalap, gamboges, colocynth, cream of tartar, myrrh, and rhubarb—was the only effectual mode of eradicating disease. Morison felt that the stomach and the bowels could not be purged too much, and it wasn’t uncommon for “hygeists” to recommend 15 or 20 pills at the onset of illness. Caricaturists responded to Morison’s hyperbole and the public’s gullibility by creating more than 25 prints about Morison Vegetable Pills.²⁰

Medical professionals vigorously attacked James Morison. A physician writing an editorial in the British medical journal, Lancet, wrote Morison was guilty of “fraud and extortion” and his Vegetable Pills were “active poison.”²¹ The founding editor of The Lancet, Thomas Wakley, spent over a decade trying to discredit Morison’s theories. Physicians worried that unnecessary deaths were caused by the use of his medicines. In 1836 a vendor of Morison Vegetable Pills actually was convicted of manslaughter of a patient diagnosed with rheumatism in the knee. A post-mortem examination left no doubt that the “large and excessive quantities of pills” doled out by the “hygeist” resulted in the fatality.²²

Extraordinary Effects of Morrisons Vegetable Pills, Grants Oddities No. 1. Charles Jameson Grant, published by J. Kendrick, 54 Leicester Sq, London.

In this caricature by Charles Jameson Grant, two men discuss the remarkable ability of Morison Vegetable Pills to regenerate legs. The men are dressed in well-worn, patched clothes and sport unshaven faces. (Clearly a comment by the artist that the lower classes were particularly naïve.) The individual on the right uses crutches and has wooden legs strapped to his stumps. The other character, with two fine strong legs, carries wooden legs under his arms. The conversation goes as follows:

Vy Snook is that you! Vell if I arnt completely Struck! Vy Ven did you change your Vooden legs for Cork ‘uns!…?

Cork ones! now do they look like a Pair of Cork ones. No old Boy they are real Flesh and Blood, and ten times a Better Pair than wot I was Born with. it’ll only cost you a Shilling my Tulip and you’ll have as good a Pair of Stumps as myself. Yesterday you must know, I bought a Box of Morrisons Uniwersal Wegetable Pills, for a Swelling in my Thighs. well, so I took’em all afore I went to Bed and when I awakes in the morning to kick of the clothes. I’m bless’d if I did’nt find myself with these ‘ere couple of Jolly good Legs and my Old Wooden ones right at the bottom of the Bed!!!

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1. Judith Wechsler, A Human Comedy; Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century Paris, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 14.
2. The Cult of Images (Le Culte des Images): Baudelaire and the 19th-century Media Explosion, UCSB Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, April 6-May 8, 1977, Santa Barbara, California: UCSB Art Museum, University of California, 1977, p. 42.
3. Beatrice Farwell, The Charged Image; French Lithographic Caricature 1816-1848, Santa Barbara, California: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1989, p. 18.
4. To see this stela, go to commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Polio_Egyptian_Stele.jpg
5. To see other lithographs by Grandville, including more in his Les Metamorphoses du Jour series, go to www.davidsongalleries.com/artists/grandville/grandville.html
6. Beatrice Farwell, The Charged Image; French Lithographic Caricature 1816-1848, Santa Barbara, California: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1989, p. 97.
7. In A Tale of Two Cities, a story set during the French Revolution, Charles Dickens writes, “Expressive signs of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there,…” p. 108.
8. Lois N. Magner, A History of Medicine, New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1992, p. 230.
9. Otto L. Bettmann, A Pictorial History of Medicine, Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1956, p. 234.
10. Otto L. Bettmann, A Pictorial History of Medicine, Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1956, p. 236.
11. Matthew Ramsey, Professional and Popular Medicine in France, 1770-1830: The Social World of Medical Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 118.
12. Matthew Ramsey, Professional and Popular Medicine in France, 1770-1830: The Social World of Medical Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 119.
13. Honoré Daumier, Doctors & Medicine in the Works of Daumier, New York: Tabard Press, [198?], various pages.
14. Nina Maria Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Eugène Delacroix; Prints, Politics and Satire 1814-1822, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, p. 28.
15. Nina Maria Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Eugène Delacroix; Prints, Politics and Satire 1814-1822, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991, p. 31-32.
16. Louis Joseph Halle, French Caricature under Louis-Philippe, undergraduate honors thesis at Harvard, [manuscript], 1932, p. 22.
17. Elizabeth K. Menon, “The Utopian Mayeux: Henri de Saint-Simon Meets the Bossu a la Mode,” Canadian Journal of History, Vol. 33, August 1998, p. 249.
18. For more information about kyphosis, see www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001240.htm
19. Judith Wechsler, A Human Comedy; Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century Paris, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 84.
20. Ann F. La Berge, Mission and Method; The Early Nineteenth-century French Public Health Movement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 283-288.
21. Ann F. La Berge, Mission and Method; The Early Nineteenth-century French Public Health Movement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 231.
22. Ann F. La Berge, Mission and Method; The Early Nineteenth-century French Public Health Movement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, p. 232.
23. www.projectwildlife.org
24. Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present, New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988, p. 221.
25. For more on abandoned children and wet nursing, see France in the Age of Les Misérables at www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255-s01/index.html and select Life on the Street and then Abandonment.
26. Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present, New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988, p. 222-228.
27. Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present, New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988, p. 146.
28. Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present, New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988, p. 147.
29. Beatrice Farwell, The Charged Image; French Lithographic Caricature 1816-1848, Santa Barbara, California: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1989, p. 95.
30. Judith Wechsler, A Human Comedy; Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century Paris, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 98.
31. www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2506300075.html
32. Judith Wechsler, A Human Comedy; Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century Paris, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982, p. 102.
33. Harold Wellington Jones, “Caricatures: Especially Medical Caricatures,” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, Vol. 31, No. 2, April 1943, p. 110. (This can be found on-line at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC194178/)
34. Petra Ten-Doesschate Chu, “A Review of The Art of Louis Leopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France by Susan L. Siegfried,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1-2, Fall-Winter 1996, p. 230.
35. Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, “A Review of The Art of Louis Leopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France by Susan L. Siegfried,” Art Bulletin, Vol. 79, No. 4, December 1997, p. 728.
36. Beatrice Farwell, The Charged Image; French Lithographic Caricature 1816-1848, Santa Barbara, California: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1989, p. 127.

Bibliography

• Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Nina Maria. Eugène Delacroix; Prints, Politics and Satire 1814-1822. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
• Bettmann, Otto L. A Pictorial History of Medicine. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1956.
• The Cult of Images (Le Culte des Images): Baudelaire and the 19th-Century Media Explosion. UCSB Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, April 6-May 8, 1977. Santa Barbara, California: UCSB Art Museum, University of California, 1977.
• Daumier, Honoré. Doctors & Medicine in the Works of Daumier by Henri Mondor. Notes and Catalogue by Jean Adhémar. New York: Tabard Press, [198?].
• Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
• “The Early Nineteenth-Century French Public Health Movement: The Disciplinary Development and Institutionalization of Hygiène Publique, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 58, No. 3, Fall 1984, pp. 363-79.
• Farwell, Beatrice. The Charged Image; French Lithographic Caricature 1816-1848. Santa Barbara, California: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1989.
• Fildes, Valerie. Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988.
• Fuchs, Rachel Ginnis. Abandoned Children; Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984.
• Halle, Louis Joseph. French Caricature under Louis-Philippe. Undergraduate honors thesis at Harvard. [manuscript in Special Collections, University of Virginia Library], 1932.
• Halter U, Krodel A. “Pray for the Hunchback; Scoliosis and Kyphosis in Cultural History,” Zeitschrift fur Orthopadie und ihre Grenzgebiete: Vol. 135, No. 6, November-December 1997, pp. 557-562.
• Jones, Harold Wellington, “Caricatures: Especially Medical Caricatures,” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association: Vol. 31 No. 2, April 1943, pp. 108-118. (This can be found on-line at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC194178/)
• La Berge, Ann F. Mission and Method; The Early Nineteenth-century French Public Health Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
• Lajer-Burcharth, Ewa. “A Review of The Art of Louis Leopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France by Susan L. Siegfried,” Art Bulletin, Vol. 79, No. 4, December 1997, pp. 726-731.
• Lucie-Smith, Edward. The Art of Caricature. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1981.
• Magner, Lois N. A History of Medicine. New York: Marcel Dekker, 1992.
• Menon, Elizabeth K. “The Utopian Mayeux: Henri de Saint-Simon Meets the Bossu à la Mode,” Canadian Journal of History, Vol. 33, August 1998, pp. 249-77.
• Menon, Elizabeth K. “Victor Hugo and the Hunchbacks of the July Monarchy,” Studies in the Humanities, Vol. 21, No. 1, June 1994, pp. 60-71.
• Ramsey, Matthew. Professional and Popular Medicine in France, 1770-1830: The Social World of Medical Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
• Ten-Doesschate Chu, Petra. “A Review of The Art of Louis Leopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France by Susan L. Siegfried,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1-2, Fall-Winter 1996, pp. 230-231.
• Wechsler, Judith. A Human Comedy; Physiognomy and Caricature in 19th Century Paris. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.
• Williams, Elizabeth A. The Physical and the Moral; Anthropology, Physiology, and Philosophical Medicine in France, 1750-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Websites

• Neurosurgical Focus: History of Spinal Surgery, http://thejns.org/doi/pdf/10.3171/foc.2004.16.1.1
• J. I. I. G. Grandville, www.davidsongalleries.com/artists/grandville/grandville.html
• Polio: Global Eradication Initiative, http://www.polioeradication.org/Polioandprevention/Historyofpolio.aspx
• France: Diplomatic Archives, www.france.diplomatie.fr/archives.gb/dossiers/140ministres.gb/restaura/chrono.html
• Donald Goldberg Collection of French Caricatures, 1830-1853: Biographical/Historical Note (Gavarni and Grandville), http://archives2.getty.edu:8082/xtf/view?docId=ead/P890001/P890001.xml;chunk.id=bioghist_1;brand=default
• Caricatures & Censorship in 19th Century France, www.greatcaricatures.com/articles_galleries/history/censor_france/censor_france.html
• France in the Age of Les Misérables, www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255-s01/index.html
• National Gallery of Art: Louis-Léopold Boilly, http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/global-site-search-page.html?searchterm=Louis-L%C3%A9opold%2BBoilly&searchpath=%2Fcontent%2Fngaweb%2Fnotfound&pageNumber=1
• Medline Plus: Kyphosis, www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001240.htm
• History of the Château de la Muette, www.oecd.org/document/63/0,2340,en_2649_34489_1956607_1_1_1_1,00.html
• Project Wildlife: Baby Songbirds, www.projectwildlife.org
• Bulletin of the Medical Library Association: Caricatures, Especially Medical Caricatures, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?iid=6142

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

The post French Caricature: Footnotes & Resources appeared first on “Very Ill!” The Many Faces of Medical Caricature in Nineteenth-Century England & France.

In the following three etchings, artist James Gillray demonstrates three common therapies employed by physicians of the day to cure disease: bloodletting, puking, and purging. Gillray’s use of vivid facial expressions also captures patients’ reaction to such treatments. In “Breathing a vein” the patient disdainfully looks away as the physician bleeds his arm. In “Gentle Emetic” and “Taking Physick” the patients appear to be in utter agony as they suffer with vomiting and diarrhea. Having experienced such treatments themselves, Gillray’s audience could readily identify with the misery and pain induced by these popular medical practices of the day.⁹

Breathing a Vein. James Gillray, published by H. Humphrey, St James’s Street, London, January 28, 1804.

Bloodletting, or phlebotomy, had been a standard medical practice since antiquity. It entailed withdrawing a considerable amount of blood from a person in order to cure disease. Blood was thought to build up in excess and then stagnate in certain areas of the body. Removing the extra blood would restore the natural balance of the body. In this etching Gillray demonstrates venesection, which he calls “breathing a vein.” The title suggests that the procedure was a pleasant way to allow the vein a little air. The reality of the procedure was something else, as the cartoon suggests. A tourniquet was placed above the elbow, the artery in the forearm was punctured by a lancet, and the blood, gushing like a geyser, was captured in a bowl.

Gentle Emetic. James Gillray, published by H. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s Street, London, January 26, 1804.

An emetic is a medicine that produces nausea and vomiting. “Puking” was considered to be another way to restore balance to the body. In this etching, a man and his physician (both bearing a striking resemblance to the characters in “Breathing a vein”) patiently wait for the effects of an emetic. The physician solicitously holds the man’s head in his hands while the patient looks extremely uncomfortable. A bowl on the table awaits the contents of his stomach. The use of “gentle” in the title is definitely tongue-in-cheek.

Taking Physick. James Gillray, published by H. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s Street, London, February 6, 1800.

The hand-colored etching, “Taking Physick,” humorously demonstrates the effects of taking laxatives to purge the body of harmful poisons. First, the grimace on the man’s face shows that the often bitter, astringent medicinal concoctions were not pleasing to the palate. Second, medicines were not meant to be taken only once, but repeatedly, in order to operate as much as 15 to 20 times. The goal was to completely flush out deleterious material from the system. Gillray draws a bottle of medicine in the patient’s hand and also two bottles on the mantle. The man fully experiences the purgative qualities of the medicine. He hasn’t even bothered to tuck in his shirttail or button the fly of his trousers since his last trip to the chamber pot.

• Precariousness of Life
• Poor Debtors

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

The post English Caricature: Heroic Medicine–Bloodletting, Emetics, and Laxatives appeared first on “Very Ill!” The Many Faces of Medical Caricature in Nineteenth-Century England & France.

Blessing of Cheap Cider. William Heath, published by T. McLean, 26 Haymarket, March 20, 1830.

A popular subject with the satirist was excessive alcohol consumption. In this cartoon entitled, “Blessing of Cheap Cider,” William Heath provides political commentary on The Beerhouse Act of 1830, passed by Britain’s prime minister, the Duke of Wellington. The aim of this act was to eliminate the evil influence of gin and other hard spirits in the lives of the working class and to promote the healthier alternative of beer. The act enabled anyone to purchase a license to sell beer for a mere two guineas. While it’s questionable whether the Beerhouse Act diminished the consumption of spirits, it did lead to an explosion in the number of beerhouses throughout Britain, particularly in urban areas with large populations of working class people. In this etching, a large rotund man, clearly from the laboring class, feels the effects of a night at the beerhouse. His eyes are rolled up, his face is in agony, and he clutches his ample belly as if in pain. He mutters with slurred speech, “I vunder vether the Duke of Vellington hever drinks Cider.”

Punch cures the Gout, the Colic, and the ’Tisick. James Gillray, published by H. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s Street, July 13, 1799.

In this 1799 hand-colored etching, James Gillray juxtaposes a popular eighteenth-century drinking song with a social commentary on the alcohol abuse of the upper class. The song is entitled, “Landlord Fill the Flowing Bowl” (also known as “Three Jolly Coachmen”).²⁴ One verse of the song is as follows:

Punch cures the gout,
the colic and the physic,
Punch cures the gout,
the colic and phylitic,
And is to all men,
And is to all men,
the very best of physic.

In the etching, three individuals find the medicinal cure to their ailments in the punchbowl. The bowl is filled with punch, a mixture of at least five or more ingredients of liquor and fruit juices made popular in the eighteenth century. Only the wealthy could have afforded an exquisite Chinese porcelain vessel like the one on the table.

The three “jolly” characters suffer from the maladies in the song. The obese gentleman on the right is afflicted with a severe case of the gout in his extremities. Gout was believed to attack men who overindulged in heavy wines and rich foods. The man has wrapped his legs, feet, and hand in soft flannel as a means to induce perspiration, thought to be a safe and efficacious method to discharge gouty matter.²⁵ The fashionable woman suffers from colic, a disease that causes pain in the bowels and costiveness. The last character is diagnosed with ’tisick, or consumption, which today is known as tuberculosis, a disease of the lungs that causes the wasting away or atrophy of the body. William Buchan, author of Domestic Medicine, wrote in 1785, “consumptions prevail more in England than in any other part of the world.”²⁶ To prevent further flair-ups of the diseases satirized in Gillray’s caricature, Buchan recommended abstaining from strong liquor. These three characters in this caricature chose to ignore prevailing medical opinion and instead turned to alcohol to find relief from their symptoms.

Indigestion. George Cruikshank, published by Thomas McLean, 26 Haymarket, August 1, 1835.

Besides excessive alcohol consumption, satirists provided social commentary on the over-consumption of food. Bread, potatoes, and tea were staples in the diet of many in England.²⁷ But for the middle and especially the upper classes, gluttony was seen as fashionable, even socially accepted. Historian Sally Mitchell writes, “English middle and upper classes ate more roasted and cooked meat (and fewer stews or casseroles) than did Europeans of a similar class.”²⁸ A good English dinner included all types of meat, including ribs of roast beef, boiled turkey, and enormous hams, all served at the table at one time.²⁹ In the 1830′s it also became fashionable to eat at a late hour, following the custom of Queen Victoria who dined as late as eight o’clock.³⁰ The protagonist in George Cruikshank’s 1835 piece, “Indigestion,” suffers from the effects of indulging in a fashionably late night of overeating. A dinner ticket from the evening’s festivities lies on the floor. His furrowed brows and flushed cheeks indicate he is uncomfortable. In an attempt to help him cool down, a little imp pours water down his back. The man clutches his chest (a touch of heartburn perhaps?) and it takes little imagination to hear a woeful groan emanate from his mouth. Though not life size, two servants remove trays of empty plates, demonstrating just how much the man ate that evening. The heavier servant has plates stacked to his chin. An imp on the nightstand tempts the main character with still more food.

A curious Junto of Slandering Elves -or- List’ners seldom hear good of themselves. George Cruikshank, published by Thomas McLean, 26 Haymarket, August, 1835.

In this timeless work, four women secretly meet for a tea party so they can merrily swap gossip. One elderly woman uses an ear trumpet so she can better hear the entertaining information another woman is reading. An uninvited fifth woman quietly hides behind the drapes to hear what transpires between the four catty women. Cruikshank admonishes, “Listener’s seldom hear good of themselves.”

Animals Friend Society. Anon. (no printer’s marks)

In this amusing, undated, and unsigned cartoon, the caricaturist pokes fun at the lengths the Animals’ Friend Society would go to protect and promote kindness to animals. Animal rights groups, along with many other humanitarian movements, had their beginnings in Victorian England. The oldest animal activist group, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, was founded in England in 1824. Its goal was to promote humane treatment of work animals, particularly cattle and horses, as well as household pets. With a missionary zeal the Society produced tracts and sermons to “effect a change in the moral feelings of those who had the control of animals.”³¹ It also prosecuted those who endangered the lives of animals. One of their original members, Lewis Gompertz, withdrew from this early organization and founded the Animals’ Friend Society in 1832. His book, Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes, was the first systematic treatise to defend animal rights.³² Gompertz also created inventions to make animals’ work loads lighter and more comfortable. Well-known Quakers such as John Cadbury (of chocolate fame) joined him in his reform movement.

In this cartoon, men and women (some dressed in the stark Quaker garments) go to extreme lengths to provide medical care for their domesticated animals. The irony is that the owners, instead of providing kindness, are actually subjecting their animals to the inhumane and cruel medical practices of the day. A woman in the forefront of the print holds a giant and formidable clyster, an old-fashioned word for enema syringe, seemingly to use on the goat lying on the floor. The balloon captions further document other popular “heroic” medical treatments. One reads, “He’s labouring under considerable excitement let him be bled in the tail and put to bed.” Regarding the mare, which requires one burly man to hold down, the caption reads, “I say Joe, no wonder the old Girls winched at this ere St. Johns Rubbing.” Finally, two women attempt to force a dog to swallow his medicine. The one woman utters, “Hold him fast, Nus Gun, I’ll make him take it.”

• Fashionable Follies
• English Artists

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

The post English Caricature: Excess and the Over-Consumption of Food & Alcohol appeared first on “Very Ill!” The Many Faces of Medical Caricature in Nineteenth-Century England & France.

Les Bossus. Louis-Léopold Boilly, [Recueil de grimaces], G. lith. de Delpech, 1827.

“Les Bossus” or “The Humpbacks” by Boilly is also from “Recueil de grimaces.” Depicted in art for millennia as evidenced by numerous ancient Greek statues, hunchbacks have been treated as outsiders and stigmatized as vile and base. Artists, fascinated by the grotesque, used hunchbacks to symbolize lower and lower-middle classes during the French Restoration (1814-1830) and beyond.¹⁶ In addition to the lithograph by Boilly, two other French prints in this exhibit feature hunchbacks: Pigal’s benefactor in “Mœurs parisiennes” and both figures in the caricature illustrating the proverb that one half of the world makes fun of the other. While the benefactor and one of the women in Boilly’s work look pleasant, the remaining four figures in Boilly’s print and the proverb figures have decidedly mean or sly countenances.

A fictional dwarf hunchback, named Mayeux, became a popular icon after the July Revolution of 1830. He was drawn by numerous artists, including Grandville, appeared in hundreds of lithographs, turned up as a character in theatrical productions, and was featured in books and pamphlets.¹⁷ Mayeux may have been an inspiration for Quasimodo, the deformed hunchback in Victor Hugo’s “Notre-Dame de Paris.”

Two common causes today of hunchback, or kyphosis, are osteoporosis and arthritis, but these tend to affect the elderly while most of the hunchbacks in this exhibit seem middle aged.¹⁸ At the time these lithographs were created, polio and tuberculosis, which starts in the lungs but can disseminate to other parts of the body including the vertebrae, were probably more important factors than degenerative disease in kyphosis. This may help explain why images of hunchbacks are so prevalent in early nineteenth-century art and literature. Not only were they a convenient type of both “malformed outsiders and mockers of society,” but also hunchbacks would have been more evident in the general populace.¹⁹

• Political Commentary?
• Public Health

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

The post French Caricature: Hunchbacks–Mocked or Mocker? appeared first on “Very Ill!” The Many Faces of Medical Caricature in Nineteenth-Century England & France.

Consultation de Médecins, 1760. Louis-Léopold Boilly, [Recueil de grimaces], G. lith. de Delpech.

According to art historian Nina Maria Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Louis-Léopold Boilly’s lithograph, “Consultation de Médecins 1760,” is more than a dim view of the state of medicine in 1760. The five aged medical consultants, who are past their prime, given the ear horn, walking canes, and bewildered looks, are also a jab at the Ancien Régime, the social and political system established in France under the old absolute monarchy and subsequently eliminated by the revolution of 1789. Athanassoglou-Kallmyer explains:

A tightly knit cluster of old and impotent physicians wearing elaborate powdered wigs shouts (to overcome deafness) and quarrels fiercely in a confused and ineffective dialogue de sourds [dialogue of the deaf]. The eighteenth-century date in the caption and the eighteenth-century look of the figures suggest that this is an evocation, unflattering and chaotic, of the Ancien Régime.¹⁵

Consultation de Médecins, 1823. Louis-Léopold Boilly, [Recueil de grimaces], G. lith. de Delpech.

Louis-Léopold Boilly has a second lithograph entitled, “Consultation de Médecins, 1823.” Like the 1760 “Consultation de Médecins” and the next image of hunchbacks, this is a print from Boilly’s most popular series, “Recueil de grimaces” or “Collection of grimaces.” Containing over 90 lithographs, the series was published between 1823 and 1828. The members of this tightly grouped quintet, shown in 1823, are at the prime of life unlike Boilly’s aged medical consultants of 1760. These consultants are all young, but distinctive in their facial expressions. The physician in the lower left looks decidedly dismayed while the man next to him seems dreamy or even drugged. The two at the top appear to be engaged in academic pursuits. The magnifying glass indicates a scientific approach to medicine, and the gentleman in the upper right has a contemplative look as if he were trying to come up with a solution to a troubling problem. The viewer is left to decide if Boilly is making a political commentary about France in 1823, but could it be that the more things change, the more they stay the same?

• Medicine in France
• Hunchbacks

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

The post French Caricature: Medical Caricatures or Political Commentary? appeared first on “Very Ill!” The Many Faces of Medical Caricature in Nineteenth-Century England & France.

George Cruikshank was taught the art of caricature by his father, Isaac Cruikshank who passed away when George was a teenager. Assuming his father’s work, Cruikshank quickly became a favorite satirist and illustrator in Great Britain, creating over 15,000 drawings in his prolific career. He illustrated many of Charles Dicken’s books and published his own George Cruikshank’s Magazine. Early in his career he withdrew from political satire, instead focusing his efforts upon the dramatic social scenes of the day. By the end of the 1840′s, Cruikshank was firmly involved in the temperance movement, and he extolled that theme frequently in his artwork.

The Cholic_G. Cruikshank – Pubd Feby. 12 1819 by G. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s St. (10 1/2″h x 13″w)

Head ache _ G. Cruikshank fect.- Pubd. Feby 12th 1819 by G. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s St. (8″h x 10″w)

[Mixing a Recipe for Corns, G. Cruikshank], London, Pubd by G. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s St March 31st, 1819. (7 3/4″h x 9 3/4″w)

The Blue Devils_!! G. Cruikshank fect. Pubd. by G. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s St, London. Jany 10th 1823. (8 3/4″h x 10 3/4″w)

The Blue Devils_!! G. Cruikshank fect. Pubd by Thos. McLean 26 Haymarket, Aug. 1, 1835. (9 7/8″h x 12 1/8″w)

A curious Junta of Slandering Elves – or -List’ners seldom hear good of themselves. E H L del. G. Cruickshank Sculpt. Pubd By Thos. McLean, 26 Haymarket, Aug_1835. (9″h x 13″w)

Jealousy. A Crowquill Esq. Invt. G. Cruikshank fect. Pubd. Aug. 1st 1835 by Thos. McLean, 26 Haymarket. (9 1/4″h x 11 1/4″w)

Indigestion. A Crowquill Esq. delt. Etched by G. Ck. Pubd. Aug 1st 1835 by Thos. McLean 26 Haymarket. (9″h x 11 1/4″w)

James Gillray (1757-1815)

James Gillray was one of the leading English caricaturists in the late eighteenth century. He was among the first satirists to exaggerate facial features while retaining the subject’s likeness. His work concentrated heavily on political satire, with his strongest attacks aimed against Napoleon. After 1791 Hannah Humphrey exclusively published Gillray’s prints, propelling her domination of the print selling business in London. By 1806 Gillray’s eyesight was failing, and unable to meet his expectations he began drinking heavily. Severe depression led to attempted suicide in 1811. Humphrey cared for him until his death on June 1, 1815.

“Miss, I have a Monstrous Crow to pluck with you!!” Pubd. Novr. 1st. 1794, H. Humphrey No. 57 New Bond Street. (5 1/4″h x 6 1/2″w)

Punch cures the Gout, the Colic, and the ’Tisick, Pubd. July 13th, 1799 by H. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s Street. (10″h x 13 1/2″w)

Taking PHYSICK, Publish’d Feby. 6th, 1800, by H. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s Street, London. (11 1/4″h x 8 3/8″w)

COMFORT to the CORNS – Js Gillray invt and fect. Pubd Feby. 6th. 1800. by H. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s Street. (10 1/2″h x 8″w)

Metallic-Tractors. J. Gillray Invt. & fect. London. Published Nov 11, 1801, by H. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s Street. (11 1/4″h x 14 1/4″w)

Gentle EMETIC, Publish’d Jany 26th, 1804, by H. Humphrey St. James’s Street. (10 1/4″h x 8″w)

Breathing a vein. Publish’d. Jany 28th, 1804, by H. Humphrey St. James’s Street, London. (10 1/4″h x 8″w)

“___and would’st thou turn the vile Reproach on me?”, J.Cd. Eg. del’ Js.Gy. fect London, Publish’d Feby 2d 1807 by H. Humphrey 27 St. James’s Street. (9 1/4″h x 13 1/4″w)

Charles Jameson Grant

Charles Jameson Grant, along with William and Henry Heath, was a principle competitor to Cruikshank. He was a Radical artist who aimed his work at a lower class of patrons. He often sensationalized his subject matter.

Extraordinary Effects of Morrisons Vegetable Pills, C J G Invent & Del Grants Oddities No 1, London Pub by J. Kendrick, 54 Leicester Sq (12 5/8″h x 9 7/8″w)

William Heath (1795-1840)

William Heath became a well-known caricaturist in the mid-1800s. He commonly signed his work with a tiny figure of Paul Pry. He also created the Glasgow, and later the Northern Looking Glass, the first caricature magazines. Little is known about his early life.

Blessing of Cheap Cider, Wm. Heath, Pub March 20 1830 by, T. McLean, 26 Haymarket. (14 1/8″h x 9 3/4″w)

D_n it Sir, I wish you would blow your NOSE_. William Heath. Pub. May 12-1830 by T. McLean, 26 Haymarket,. Sole Publisher of W. Heath Etching. (15 3/8″h x 10″w)

Henry Heath (floruit 1824-1828)

Critics of Henry Heath describe him as untalented and find his works more crudely drawn and colored than Gillray and Cruikshank. His caricatures focused heavily on domestic politics, primarily at the government of Wellington and Peel, and rarely on international issues.

EXPOSTULATION. H. Heath fect. Published 1830 by S. Gans, Southampton Street, Spendleshanks, delt. (16″h x 10 3/4″w)

Theodore Lane (1800-1828)

In the early nineteenth century, Theodore Lane was a rising star in the art world. His paintings and caricatures met with approval from the public and artists alike. His series of seventy legal illustrations applied legal terms to a fashionable and convivial life. He also designed and etched drawings for a book, Life of an Actor, Peregrine Proteus, by Pierce Egan. He met an untimely death on May 21, 1828 when he accidentally fell through an unguarded skylight to the flag pavement below.

Moments of Pain. [Atributed to Theodore Lane] Pubd by G. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s [1820] (12 1/2″h x 8 1/2″w)

Anonymous

Very Ill! London Published by J. L. Marks, 27 Artillery Street Bishopsgate, No.11. (7 7/8″h x 7 1/4″w)

Animals Friend Society – no printers marks. (10 1/2″h x 16″ w)

Paying in Kind, Pubd. May 12, 1823 by G. Humphrey, 24 St. James’s Street & 74 New Bond Street, W.H. Del & Sculpt. [possible artist, William Heath] (8″h x 10 3/4″w)

Faith, Pubd. Dec. 6th 1829 by S. Gans Southhampton Street. (10″h x 4 3/4″w)

A Cure for a Cold, Published by G. Tregear, 123 Cheapside London 1833 (12 1/2″h x 10″w)

• Excess & Over-Consumption
• Footnotes & Resources

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

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Comfort to the Corns. James Gillray, published by H. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s Street, February 6, 1800.

In this caricature, James Gillray depicts a grotesquely unattractive woman seeking relief for her aching feet. Poorly fitting shoes commonly cause corns. At the time of this caricature, shoes were not made specifically to fit the right foot or left foot; they were interchangeable. In Gillray’s etching the woman’s pointed shoes appear to be much smaller than her actual feet. To remove the offensive and painful protrusions, the woman prepares to hack her corns off with a giant knife.

Mixing a Recipe for Corns. George Cruikshank, published by George Humphrey, 27 St. James’s St., March 31, 1819.

In this intricately detailed caricature, Cruikshank’s character also suffers from extremely painful corns. She has removed her shoe from her left foot to reveal large calluses on her toes. Her pointed, high-heeled shoe on the floor appears to be much smaller than her foot, a definite commentary by the artist on the foolishness of fashionable footwear.

To solve her medical problem, the woman resorts to self-medication. There are numerous bottles, herbs, as well as a mortar and pestle on the table, and all sorts of jars and jugs strewn on the floor. She holds a recipe up close to her face with one hand, while stirring an angry, bubbling, burning concoction in the fireplace with her other hand.

The Cholic. George Cruikshank, published by G. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s St., February 12, 1819.

George Cruikshank satirizes the abuse that women experienced by being held hostage to the fashions of the day in this entertaining print entitled, “The Cholic.” Colic is a medical term for severe abdominal pain, represented in the caricature by the tightening of a rope around the woman’s waist. The irony is that her agony is self-imposed and not caused by a preexisting medical condition. The woman is a victim to the popular practice of wearing tight-laced corsets. The woman screams in pain as many imps pull and tug on the rope in order to get her waist to be as tiny as possible. Another creature holds a needle and thread as he sews up the back of her dress. Three others threaten the woman with various weapons: a pitchfork, a spear, and a knife.

• Doomed Relationships
• Excess & Over-Consumption

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

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The immigration of poor, sometimes sick people into urban areas with inadequate housing, water, and sewage disposal created public health difficulties in major cities in the United States and Europe in the nineteenth century. Although public latrines were uncommon in early nineteenth-century Paris, they were not unprecedented. Regulations were made against public urination and defecation, but historian Ann F. La Berge writes,

Nineteenth-century Parisians were in the habit of using any area of the city as a latrine. Urinating and defecating in gutters, on sidewalks, in streets, on buildings, and off bridges into canals and the river were common practice, to the chagrin of many hygienists. In fact, there was little practical alternative when one was away from home, for public conveniences were few. The only mention of public latrines in Paris dates from an 1817 health council report… ²¹

Hygienists proposed increasing the number of public latrines. A plan to construct 200 free latrines and urinals was promoted by the Parisian prefect of police in the early 1830s, but there is no evidence that either he or his successor accomplished this.²²

Ah!… aye!… le cas est pressant. Béraud, Genty, Editeur; Rue St. Jacques, No 33.

In this print the artist successfully makes fun of both an obsession concerning bodily functions, particularly those associated with the gastrointestinal tract, and the upper class. As a man approaches the “Cabinet D’aisance” or the privy, the caption notes that his need is urgent. Signs, some legible and others not, are posted all around the entryway. There are advertisements for a purgative powder by Doctor Leroy, moveable odorless pits or toilets, and pumps for bad smells. Another poster dedicates a poem in twelve verses, “The Art of Evacuating,” to the Faculty of Medicine of Paris. The sign regarding the history of the low countries, refers to Belgium and Flanders, but also is a pun on the lower abdominal regions of the body. There are notices for the art of loving, septic drainage, a course of chemistry, and an essay on the urinary tract. The sign offering dinner for the cheap price of 18 sous might imply that the customer will also desperately need the outhouse after dining. The “Foire de St. Cloud” notice mocks the royalty who maintained a residence at Saint-Cloud. Foire can be translated as a fair or market, but more significantly given the sign’s position outside a privy, another meaning for foire is diarrhea. An additional gibe at the upper class is the poster that declares, “down with the wigs,” since hairpieces were worn by the wealthy and powerful.

• Hunchbacks
• Wet Nursing

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• English Caricature
• French Caricature

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1. Roy Porter, Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1660-1850, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989, p. 132.
2. For a discussion of Briton’s anxiety and obsession with health, see Chapters 1 & 2 in Bruce Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978, pp. 3-45.
3. See the title page in William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985.
4. See www.rcpe.ac.uk/library/exhibitions/enlightenment/enlightenment.html
5. William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985, p. 352.
6. William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985, p. 355.
7. William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985, p. 353.
8. Lois N. Manger, History of Medicine, New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1992, p. 205.
9. Fiona Haslam, From Hogarth to Rowandson: Medicine in Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996, p. 143.
10. Bruce Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978, pp. 4-5.
11. Bruce Haley, The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978, p. 5.
12. Sally Mitchell, Daily Life in Victorian England, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996, p. 199.
13. Roy Porter, Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1660-1850, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989, p. 134.
14. Lois N. Manger, A History of Medicine, New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1992, p. 217.
15. See Chapter 1, “Interpreting Quackery,” in Roy Porter, Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1660-1850, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989, pp. 1-20.
16. The Times, Issue 5224, col D, May 21, 1801, p. 3.
17. Draper Hill, Mr. Gillray The Caricaturist, London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1965, p. 140.
18. For a discussion on Elisha and Benjamin Perkins see Jacques M. Quen, “Elisha Perkins, Physician, Nostrum-Vendor, or Charlatan?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 37, 1963, pp. 159-166.
19. James Morison, “To The Editor of the The Times,” The Times, Issue 16927, col A, January 1, 1839, p. 8.
20. To see additional caricatures about Morison’s pills see William H Helfand, Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera and Books, New York: The Grolier Club, 2002, pp. 113-127.
21. “Editorial,” Lancet, Vol 2, April 2, 1836, p. 57.
22. Tarlton Law Library – Law in Popular Culture Collection, The Complete Newgate Calender, Vol. V, www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/newgate5/salmon.htm.
23. For further discussion of satires about the Queen Caroline affair see Marcus Wood, Radical Satire and Print Culture, 1790-1822, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, pp. 149-154 and 253-258.
24. The full song can be found at www.firstulster.org/page/songs.
25. William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985, pp. 484-493.
26. William Buchan, Domestic Medicine, New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985, p. 218.
27. Sally Mitchell, Daily Life in Victorian England, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996, p. 122.
28. Sally Mitchell, Daily Life in Victorian England, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996, p. 125.
29. John Burnett, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Diet in England from 1815 to the Present Day, London: Scolar Press, 1966, p. 81.
30. John Burnett, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Diet in England from 1815 to the Present Day, London: Scolar Press, 1966, p. 79.
31. “Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” The Times, Issue 12367, col A, June 17, 1824, p. 3.
32. See introduction by Charles Magel, in Lewis Gompertz, Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes, London: The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd, 1997, pp. vi-xx.

Bibliography

• “A Card – The Possessors of Perkin’s Patent Metallic Tractors,” The Times, Issue 5114, col D, May 21, 1801, p. 3.
• Armstrong, David and Elizabeth Metzger Armstrong. The Great American Medicine Show: Being an Illustrated History of Hucksters, Healers, and Health Evangelists, and Heroes from Plymouth Rock to the Present. New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1991.
• Black, J. Anderson & Madge Garland. A History of Fashion. New York: William Morrow & Company, Inc., 1980.
• Buchan, William. Domestic Medicine. New York & London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985. The 1871 edition can be viewed on-line at babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31378008336003;view=1up;seq=538.
• Burnett, John. Plenty and Want: A Social History of Diet in England from 1815 to the Present Day. London: Scolar Press, 1966.
• Bynam, W. F. and Roy Porter. Medical Fringe & Medical Orthodoxy 1750-1850. Kent: Mackays, 1987.
• “Copy of a letter from James Morison, Esq., The Hygeist,” The Times, Issue 16244, col F, Oct. 26, 1836, p. 7;
• “Deaths by Acts of Violence,” Lancet, Vol. 1, September 30, 1837 – March 24, 1838, p. 667.
• “Dinner to Mr. Alderman Harmer and Mr. Bell,” Lancet, Vol. 2, March 25, 1837 – September 23, 1837. p. 130.
• Feaver, William. Masters of Caricature: from Hogarth and Gillray to Scarfe and Levine. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.
• Gompertz, Lewis. Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes. London: The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd., 1997.
• Haley, Bruce. The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978.
• Haslam, Fiona. From Hogarth to Rowandson: Medicine in Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996.
• Helfand, William H. Quack, Quack, Quack: The Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera and Books. New York: The Grolier Club, 2002.
• Hill, Draper. Mr. Gillray The Caricaturist. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1965.
• Jones, Harold Wellington. “Caricatures: Especially Medical Caricatures,” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, Vol.31, No.2, April 1943, pp. 108-118. (This can be found on-line at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC194178/)
• Lucie-Smith, Edward. The Art of Caricature. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1981.
• Manger, Lois N. A History of Medicine. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1992.
• Mitchell, Sally. Daily Life in Victorian England. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.
• Morison, James. “To the Editor of the Times,” The Times, Issue 16927, col A, January 1, 1839, p. 8.
• Porter, Roy. Disease, Medicine and Society in England 1550-1860. Hampshire: MacMillan Publishers, Ltd., 1987.
• Porter, Roy. Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1660-1850. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989.
• Quen, Jacques M. “Elisha Perkins, Physician, Nostrum-Vendor, or Charlatan?” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Vol. 37, 1963. pp. 159-166.
• “The Poison Vender Morison Versus the Dispatch,” Lancet, Vol. 1, September 24, 1836 – March 18, 1837, pp. 764-765.
• Wood, Marcus. Radical Satire and Print Culture, 1790-1822. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.

Websites

• Wikipedia: Caroline of Brunswick, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_of_Brunswick
• Wikipedia: George IV of the United Kingdom, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_IV_of_the_United_Kingdom
• Alex Peck Antique Scientifica Sale Catalogue, antiquescientifica.com/catalog16.htm
• The Hartford Medical Society Menczer Museum of Medicine and Dentistry: Galvanic Tractors, library.uchc.edu/hms/tractors.html
• Brabazon and the Ellis, Heaton and Walker families: The Prince Regent’s Privy Purse, www.brabazon.org.uk/brab11.htm
• Victorian Era Health & Medicine: Common Diseases of the 19th Century, www.geocities.com/victorianlace16/diseases.html
• Victorian Era Health & Medicine: Early Methods of Treatment, www.geocities.com/victorianlace16/treatments.html
• Victorian Medicine, www.geocities.com/victorianmedicine/html
• University of Texas at Austin, Tarlton Law Library (“Convicted of manslaughter, in administering Morison‘s Pills”), tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/newgate5/salmon.htm
• National Portrait Gallery, www.npg.org.uk
• The Royal Pavilion, www.royalpavilion.org.uk/
• Index of /science/health, www.victorianweb.org/science/health
• Wikipedia: Albert Abrams, www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Abrams

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

The post English Caricature: Footnotes & Resources appeared first on “Very Ill!” The Many Faces of Medical Caricature in Nineteenth-Century England & France.

The medical regulations law of 1803 stipulated a two-tier model for education. Health officers received predominantly practical training, but doctors were required to attend four years at a state medical school and pass examinations in anatomy, physiology, pathology, nosology, material medica, chemistry, pharmacy, hygiene, forensic medicine, and clinical medicine.⁹

Hospital reform resulted in a milieu conducive for clinical research, autopsies, and statistical analysis. By 1830 the 30 hospitals in Paris could accommodate 20,000 patients.¹⁰

Ça va mal!! Edme Jean Pigal, (Scènes de Société. No. 16.), Lith. de Langlumé, chez Gihaut et Martinet.

This Edme Jean Pigal lithograph with the caption, “It’s bad!!” shows a doctor who exudes superiority and importance with his erect pose and intense gaze. He takes the pulse of his suffering patient who deferentially gazes up as he awaits the prognosis. The patient’s attire, chair, and substantial abdomen indicate he is in the ranks of the prosperous.

In the early nineteenth century, a French physician might see fewer than ten patients daily, sometimes only two or three. This low utilization of professional care was principally due to the high cost of health care compared to earnings. A visit by a health officer, who would have had less formal training than a doctor, might cost an agricultural worker a day’s wage, even without a charge for the practitioner’s travel. A doctor’s house call could be two or three times as high. In Paris, where doctor fees were considerably more than those charged by a rural health officer, an urban artisan could pay a week’s wages just for the doctor’s visit.¹¹

Remedies cost extra, so it is not surprising that a doctor’s clientele consisted mainly of landowners and their servants, merchants, other professionals, and the more successful artisans.¹²

Medicine has proved to be a field rich in humor for centuries, and the French doctor’s rigorous training did not keep him from being an object of satire. In the middle of the nineteenth century Honoré Daumier created a number of caricatures whose captions, some quoted below, took pointed jabs at the medical profession. Doctors were ridiculed for excessive charges:

…Believe me, drink water, lots of water… rub the bones of your legs… and come to see me often… that won’t impoverish you… my consultations are free… Now, you owe me 20 francs for these two bottles…

ineffectual treatments such as bleeding:

…I’m going to apply thirty leeches to your epigastrium and if tomorrow I don’t find you improved, I’ll apply sixty…

and purging:

How the devil does it happen that all my patients succumb?… Yet I bleed them, I physic them, I drug them… I simply can’t understand!

impractical operations:

…you’ve seen this operation, that everyone said was impossible, performed with complete success…—But, Doctor, the patient’s dead…—What of it! She would have died anyway…

and caring more about the chance to treat an interesting illness than the well-being of the patient:

By Jove, I’m delighted! You have yellow fever… it will be the first time I’ve been lucky enough to treat this disease!¹³

Mais docteur je cuis dans mon bain. (La Métempsycose réalisée. No. 2.), á Bruxelles chez Daemll[?], et á Paris, chez Méant, fils, rue St. Antoine, No. 9.

This print styled after Grandville, shows a patient not just turning as red as a lobster, but actually being transformed into a lobster, ready to be eaten by his persecutors. The central figure protests, “But Doctor, I cook in my bath.” The patient with his pinkish leg attempts to get out of the tub, but the wolf-headed physician has one hand firmly on his shoulder and the other sternly pointing to the water forcing the patient to stay in his bath. The dog-faced servant pours additional water into the tub that has at its base a small window showing a built-in compartment for fire to heat the water. Billowing clouds of steam illustrate the fire’s effectiveness. It appears that the therapy might just be worse than the ailment, not an uncommon occurrence given the state of medical treatment at the time.

En gouterai je? L. Noël, Lithog: de F. Noël, Publié par Giraldon – Bovinet et Compie, Mds d’estampes, Commissionnaires, rue Pavée St. André, No. 5.

The caption, “Will I like it?” is not required to understand this print. A seated man wearing a lounging robe and nightcap contemplates the unpleasant task before him. On his table rests a book, possibly one giving recipes for medical concoctions, and a labeled bottle with the cork removed. As he stirs the liquid in his cup, he peers out of the lithograph as if asking the viewer his question. His puckered-up face indicates that he already knows the answer.

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Although misunderstanding the root cause of disease, these highly educated physicians methodically identified, classified, and described various maladies. Some of the more noted English physicians were Thomas Hodgkin, Thomas Addison, and Richard Bright, all of whom described diseases that carry their names today. The emphasis on thoroughly understanding the outward manifestation of illness required practitioners to spend a lot of time with patients to classify their symptoms. The physicians painstakingly recorded their patient’s history in order to formulate a diagnosis. They then initiated therapeutics; often resulting in daily visits to the patient to further refine the treatment. Historian Roy Porter writes, “Thus – for those who could afford such cosseting – everyone’s treatment was bespoke, perfectly tailored to his condition.”¹³ The costs associated with daily visits and medicines made it difficult for the working class or the impoverished to afford medical care.¹⁴

Like people today, nineteenth-century Britons lamented the exorbitant fees doctors billed. These caricatures deal with the high costs associated with health care. In the amusing cartoon, “Paying in Kind,” the doctor’s bill for medicine and house calls is so long that it trails on the ground. In “Faith” the caricature mocks the sheer quantity of medicine prescribed by the patient’s doctor. In the more thoughtful and provocative caricature, entitled “The Blue Devils,” the artist explores a melancholy world ushered in by debt, principally to the physician. Images of death stalk the beleaguered man, and the doctor serves as death’s deputy.

Paying in Kind. Anon, published by G. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s Street & 74 New Bond Street, W.H. Del & Sculpt, May 12, 1828.

In this caricature a well-dressed individual lounges in front of a fireplace. A messenger boy has just delivered a bill from the doctor. When the man unrolls the scroll, the lengthy bill rests on the floor. The man explains to the messenger, “Tell the Doctor I will certainly pay for the Physic but shall return the Visits!”

Faith. Anon, published by S. Gans, Southhampton Street, December 6, 1829.

Nineteenth-century physicians commonly prescribed large quantities of drugs to treat a single illness, making it extremely difficult for the working class to afford medicine. In this caricature, a seemingly dimwitted middle-aged man stands in his robe, nightcap, pajamas, and slippers. He holds a large spoon filled with medicine poured from the bottle in his hand. Clearly this is not his first dose of medicine, as two empty bottles are strewn on the floor, nor will this be his last, as many more bottles await him on and under the table. The caption reads, “Bolus says that the last thirty doses have done me a World of good! I do’nt think so myself, but certainly the Doctor must know best.”

The Blue Devils!! George Cruikshank, published by Thos. McLean, 26 Haymarket, August 1, 1835.

In this intricately detailed print, Cruikshank brings us into the life of a forlorn, solitary figure sitting hunched over a barren hearth. The drawing, entitled “The Blue Devils,” describes the depressed world of the protagonist. Three pictures hanging on the back wall symbolize the man’s life careening out of control. A devilish creature wielding a fiery paintbrush adds his own special touches to the artwork. The first painting depicts a boat sinking in a ferocious storm at sea. In the second, flames burst from a burning building. The final picture, this one not yet framed, shows a sketch of a man similarly dressed and posed as our protagonist. Behind him is an angry woman, presumably his wife, about to strike him over the head with what looks like a metal bed warmer.

All around the poor man there are imps and symbols encouraging him to choose death over life. A little devil on his shoulder holds a noose over his head. Another, hanging from the mantle, offers a knife. Yet another imp in the fireplace blows smoke out of his ears, while a monster with white fangs hungrily looks up from underneath the chair. Cruikshank even draws the andirons to resemble skeletons.

The protagonist falls into such depths of despair due to his inability to surmount the debts that have piled up around him. A sign hanging on the fireplace says, “PRAY REMEMBER the POOR DEBTORS.” A gentleman taps the debtor on the shoulder to give him a bill as a thief picks his pocket. Other debts appear to be doctor’s bills. In the fireplace, the bill has faint traces of the word “Dr.” written on it. On the table stacked with bills, an imp holds an empty medicine bottle and shouts with glee. On a shelf, a devilish creature stands on two books: Miseries of Human Life, Vol. 2,222 and Buchan’s Domestic Medicine. The man’s fate looks grim as a fat, pompous magistrate leads a procession of mourning women and two evil men, one with a coffin strapped to his back.

• Heroic Medicine
• Quacks & Nostrums

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

The post English Caricature: Cost of Health Care, Pray Remember the Poor Debtors appeared first on “Very Ill!” The Many Faces of Medical Caricature in Nineteenth-Century England & France.

Expostulation. Henry Heath, published by S. Gans, Southampton Street, 1830.

Caricaturists lampooned topics that today might be considered in poor taste. Henry Heath in his etching entitled, “Expostulation,” demonstrates how marital discord could be a catalyst for more brutal moments of domestic abuse. The two hissing cats symbolically portray the man and woman’s bitter relationship. However, Heath’s humor lies in role reversal. In this case, it is the man who suffers bodily injuries at the hands of his dour wife. His hand and arm are bandaged and wrapped in a sling. His eye appears bruised and black and is also encased in a bandage. He pleads his case to the woman who rejects him by turning her back to him. The caption reads:

Oh say when I try your affections to move,
Why deaf to my sighs and my tears?
Perhaps it was right to disemble your love.
But why did you kick me down Stairs?

Jealousy. George Cruikshank, published by Thomas McLean, 26 Haymarket, August 1, 1835.

In this elaborate etching, George Cruikshank delves into the life of a man overwrought with jealousy. The protagonist sits at a table strewn with documents, and his head rests on his hand. A letter from an anonymous correspondent lies open in front of him. The contents of the letter disturb him and leave him pondering its information. He is so deep in thought that he is oblivious to the whistling kettle on the stove. Two devilish imps are perched on the main character’s shoulders. Both are encouraging the protagonist to notice what is going on around him. One little demon hands him a pair of glasses as if to say, “Open your eyes!” The other imp sits on his shoulder and points to a love scene below. In this case a dandified soldier reaches up to his lover as she climbs down a rope ladder, perhaps symbolizing an escape from an upstairs window. In another scene a soldier and a woman secretly cuddle underneath a chair. It appears that the letter has informed the distraught character that the woman in his life is carrying on an illicit love affair.

The man’s jealous thoughts lead him to contemplate the end of his life. Cruikshank draws two scenes of death, both featuring men dressed similarly to the protagonist. In the scene on the mantle, a soldier shoots a figure at close range. In the other setting, a man commits suicide by hanging himself. He has kicked aside the footstool as a devilish imp, sprawled on the table, holds the rope. The viewer is left to wonder whether the revolver (comically drawn with arms, legs, and a top hat) resting near the right hand of the protagonist will be used in a fit of jealousy.

Miss I have a Monstrous Crow to pluck with you!! James Gillray, published by H. Humphrey, No. 57 New Bond Street, November 1, 1794.

In this 1794 hand-colored etching, a man dressed as a woman points his finger and utters, “Miss, I have a Monstrous Crow to pluck with you!!” The “Miss” is addressed to a visibly pregnant woman. The words “monstrous crow” is a euphemism (made popular in a Mother Goose nursery rhyme) for battle. The large black crow under the table squawks “Oh! Too Bad!” Though superficially a commentary on a personal relationship, the caricature probably had deeper political connotations.

__and would’st thou turn the vile Reproach on me? James Gillray, published by H. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s Street, London, February 2, 1807.

This caricature addresses failed love. James Gillray draws a beautiful and very pregnant woman standing before a grotesquely unattractive man. The man’s face emulates that of the emaciated stallion in the painting behind him, and the folds on his jacket bear a resemblance to the rib cage of the horse. Behind the woman is a picture of a hen and a cock fighting. On the mantle is a statue of Venus, but the cupids on either side have turned their backs to her.

Moments of Pain. Attributed to Theodore Lane, published by G. Humphrey, 27 St. James’s St., 1820.

The relationship between King George IV and his estranged wife, Queen Caroline, provided a wealth of material for the satirist.²³ In this caricature attributed to Theodore Lane, the artist describes the King’s “moments of pain” upon the return of his exiled wife for his coronation in 1820. The artist draws a distressed King George IV languishing in a room decorated with “Asian exoticism,” an allusion to the King’s opulently decorated Royal Pavilion. Historians note that the obese King was addicted to laudanum. The artist suggests this addiction by including a box of pills and a bottle of medicine on the table next to the king.

King George IV and Queen Caroline despised each other from the moment they met, and only married for convenience. (The then Prince George married his first cousin, formerly Caroline of Brunswick, as a means to get Parliament to pay off his sizeable debt.) After consummating their marriage and producing one heir, they lived apart for the remainder of their lives. When King George IV ascended to the throne in 1820, Caroline returned to England to assume her duties as queen. The King desperately wanted to divorce his wife and proceeded to try to pass a “Bill of Pains and Penalties” which would deny Caroline her title, prerogatives, rights, privileges, and exemptions as queen. In this caricature, the artist draws a large scroll filled with a list of addresses to the Queen, as two of the King’s courtiers, Henry Addington and Benjamin Bloomfield, attend to his needs. The Bill was defeated in the House of Lords by a vote of 123 to 95. Fortunately for the King, his scorned queen died in 1821, two weeks after he refused her entry to his coronation.

• Quacks & Nostrums
• Fashionable Follies

• Exhibit Introduction
• English Caricature
• French Caricature

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