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The cast list from this 1807 edition of Ravenscroft’s The Anatomist includes Thomas Rowlandson’s close friend John Bannister (1760-1836). Known especially for his comedic talents, Bannister trained with the great David Garrick (1717-1779), owner and…

In The Company of Undertakers, Hogarth parodies the theme of medicine as a “noble” profession by creating a phony coat of arms emblazoned with the heads of physicians, all holding to their noses an attribute of their profession, a cane filled at the…

In The English Dance of Death Rowlandson applies his morbid sense of humor to a narrative poem by William Combe. The Quack Doctor depicts a busy apothecary mixing medicine for a line of anxious patients, while a man with gout, perhaps a regular…

First published in 1771, this epistolary novel by Thomas Smollett (1721-1771), MD, follows the travels of the household of Matthew Bramble, who suffering from gout, spends time taking the waters at Bath. Writing to his physician Dr. Lewis, Bramble…

As in Molière’s comedic plays, Rowlandson’s The Last Gasp demonstrates the gullibility of people who depend on quacks. In the image, a toad-like man and his wife stick out their tongues for a physician who visits them in their finely appointed…

In 1778 Rowlandson produced a series of prints, The Comforts of Bath, about this popular English spa resort. Displayed here is a preliminary drawing for one of these prints, entitled The Pump Room, depicting a social center at the spa where the water…

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…

The Tour of Doctor Syntax follows a fictional schoolmaster’s adventures in search of the “picturesque.” A retired schoolmaster, Doctor Syntax stumbles upon outlandish situations and finds himself in humorous predicaments. Rowlandsons’s Doctor Syntax…

Vesalius and the Invention of the Modern Body Conference, Saint Louis University

Vesalius and the Invention of the Modern Body Conference, Saint Louis University