A wealthy and well-dressed doctor; suggesting he has a large number of patients. Wood engraving by J. Orrin Smith after J.K. Meadows, 1840.

  • Meadows, Joseph Kenny, 1790-1874.
Date:
1840
Reference:
10939i
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About this work

Description

The drawing inspired an essay by R.H. Horne, published in "Heads of the people", including the words: "A fashionable physician has a favourite disease and a favourite remedy, each of which changes like any other fashion. Sometimes it is the liver, then the lungs, then the head, then the stomach, then even the heart. The stomach, however, is the favourite that "comes round" the oftenest. This is a corps de réserve for all failures, and a prescription for it must generally do good."

Publication/Creation

1840

Physical description

1 print : wood engraving

Lettering

The fashionable physician. "He must have killed a great many people to get so rich." Molière.

Reference

Wellcome Collection 10939i

Creator/production credits

On the artist Joseph Kenny Meadows (1790-1874) see Eric de Maré, The Victorian woodblock illustrators, London 1980, pp. 70-73: "He was known as Iron Jack on account of his robust health which he attributed to his simple, undernourished childhood spent mostly in a lighthouse; no amount of alcohol could impair it and it carried him on to the age of eighty-four" (p. 70)

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  • LocationStatusAccess
    Closed stores
    10939i.2
  • LocationStatusAccess
    Closed stores
    10939i.1

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