A patient having his knee reflexes checked. Colour etching by May H. Lesser, 1974.

1974

1 print : etching with aquatint ; platemark 41 x 57.3 cm

Dispossessed 1/10. May H. Lesser

Lesser describes the print as follows: 'This patient has waited all day in the public hospital to be examined. First, his chart had to be found, and then a second set of X-rays made. It's now late in the afternoon. The chief resident checks the patient's knee reflexes, and I am reminded of the stained-glass panel taken from an Italian church, now in Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The panel depicts Christ washing a poor man's feet. The scene I'm witnessing now has the same solumn composition.'

Los Angeles County General Hospital, University of Southern California, 1974.

Wellcome Collection 577653i