Art and epigram regarding science and medicine in relation to death : being a reprint of a communication from the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine (Section of the History of Medicine), 1914, Vol. VII, pp. 192-217 : together with an addition on epigram and art in relation to the excessive fear of death / by F. Parkes Weber.

  • Weber, Frederick Parkes, 1863-1962.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Art and epigram regarding science and medicine in relation to death : being a reprint of a communication from the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine (Section of the History of Medicine), 1914, Vol. VII, pp. 192-217 : together with an addition on epigram and art in relation to the excessive fear of death / by F. Parkes Weber. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    7/34 (page 5)
    ville’s design^ of the apoplectic-looking baron after his good dinner, telling his servant to say that he is “not at home’’ to a visitor (Death), who is, however, entering the room without waiting for permission. (This design seems to have inspired. one of Death being asked to “come in,’’ by Willibald Krain, in Jugend.) Alfred Rethel has pictured Death, as a cook, in the kitchen of a rich gourmand’s house. Hogarth’s “Gin Lane,’’ and “La Vice Supreme,’’ by Felicien Rops, should also be mentioned.^ Certain medals® relate to the sanitary disposal of the dead—e.g., to the cremation of corpses and to the prohibition of burials within cities and towns or inside churches and other closed buildings. A not uncom- mon device which relates to medical work is that of a skeleton-like figure (representing Death or Disease) being withheld or driven back as the result of hygienic work or medical skill and devotion; for instance, the obverse design on the military-like medals awarded to all those who helped in sanitary work, &c., during the epidemic of bubonic plague in Hong-Kong, 1894. Similarly, Hlsculapius is represented warding off a figure of Death on a medal commemorating the epidemic of cholera in Paris, 1832. The device on certain medals of the Royal Humane Society, London, is much more pleasing. A child is pictured endeavouring to rekindle a torch with its breath, and the accompanying inscription is “ Lateat scintillula forsan.’’ Many of the great advances in medical knowledge and surgery in opposing disease and unnecessary death are commenrorated or alluded to on medals (there is, for instance, a medal recording the recent triumph of Paul Ehrlich and S. Hata) and minor works of art; but, to take one instance alone, the account of the medals relating to Edward Jenner and the discovery of vaccina- tion would use up more space than I have the command of. Such discoveries and, especially, the modern scientific and practical work of Pasteur, Lister, Koch, Ehrlich, E. von Behring, Ronald Ross, Patrick Manson, W. C. Gorgas, &c., have helped Medicine to climb the lowest rungs of the endless ladder of progress, and have encouraged the appli- cation of cheering lines from Arthirr Hugh Clough’s well-known poem, “ Say not the struggle nought availeth,’’ to the steadfast hope and striving advance of the still very youthful sciences of Hygiene and Therapeutics. ‘ Sec F, P. Weber, loc. cit., p. 89. - Ibid., pp. 86, 87, 89. ■' Ibid., pp. 314, 325, 326.