A doctor examining a disgruntled patient, John Bull, who is being reassured by his master. Lithograph by Crichton, 1834.

[Edinburgh] (Register St.) : Crichton lithog. [A. Crichton's Lithographic Establishment], [1834?]

1 print : lithograph

The bitter pill !!! or John Bull rendered refractory in consequence of medical mismanagement!!! ... Crichton lithog. Register st. Lettering continues: "Doctor. - 'In truth Mr. Bull you are falling off prodigiously! you are really next to a skeleton, and your pulse is exceedinly feverish! - I strongly recommend to you copious blood-letting and above all things a pill.' Inn's [?] master. - 'Now John you hear what the doctor says, so you must take the pill you know, & please your old master: - the doctor has been at prodigious trouble in procuring it!!!' John. - 'Well master, I'm very sorry that he should have been so much trouble to so little purpose but the truth is there's little else the matter with me than what has been occasioned by the confounded prescriptions of this here quack surgeon himself, when he had the charge of me afore & who is utterly ignorant of my constitution! As to my being next a to skeleton that I can hardly fail to be when he's beside me!! Howsomever master as I believe you would have been kind enough to me had Missis let you alone I may take the pill into my mouth a little, just to please you, but blow me if I swallows it! I'll spit it out again I tells you that! Pray why did you turn poor Dr. Melbourne to the right about, and that great hamputator surgeon Vaux?? Why I would rather have Dr. Durham himself powerful as his medicines are, than this here pretender chap, as does'nt know how to feel a pulse even! but if I follow any more of his prescriptions, my name a'nt Bull, that's all!!!"

Too late for the British Museum, Catalogue of political and personal satires, London 1870-1954

David J. Schenck, Directory of the lithographic printers of Scotland, 1820-1870, Edinburgh 1999, p. 39 (on Alexander Crichton)

Wellcome Collection 13440i