The Reward of Cruelty

The Reward of Cruelty

Social satire, Medicine in art

In the engraving entitled The Reward of Cruelty, the English artist William Hogarth (1697-1764), demonstrates the popular view of 18th century- medicine as a ghoulish occupation involving skeletons, cauldrons of boiling bones, and buckets of entrails thrown to the dogs. In Hogarth’s representation of an anatomy lecture, barber-surgeons seem to enjoy the work of carving up the body while pompously mortar-boarded physicians observe distractedly. Overhead the coat of arms of the King proclaims the imprimatur of the crown, also alluded to by the noose of the gallows that remains around the neck of the grimacing corpse of Tom Nero, who for his capital crimes suffers a fate considered even worse than death.

William Hogarth (1697-1764)

from the series "The Four Stages of Cruelty"

Hogarth, London

1751

Debra Cashion, in collaboration with Elisabeth Barrett, '15

Engraving

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Still image

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