19 Aug 2019
James Gillray
James Gillray was a contemporary of Thomas Rowlandson, and he could be every bit as biting in his representations of medicine. For example, in 1801 he satirized the craze from the US to Britain for Perkin’s Tractors, a device whose “inventor,” Elisha Perkins, claimed it cured all manner of disease through electric force. Gillray skewers […]
1 Sep 2019
Doctors Differ
There are many punchlines to which cartoonists would return time and again when addressing the topic of medicine, but “doctors differ” was without doubt the most popular. We see an early version of it in the background of the penultimate entry in William Hogarth’s series Harlot’s Progress where the famous patent medicine huckster of Covent […]
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