An ill man reluctantly taking his medicine. Etching by W.H. Brooke after R. Dagley.

"Tom saw, and could not but enjoy the scene. / The world affords few scenes more farcical / Than those of taking physic, where I've been / To me appear, at least in general; / But risibility I can control / When I 'm chief actor. -Then, 'tis not so droll. / But dearly I the writhings love to view / Of almost any other hapless elf, / In ludicrous distress and doleful stew, / When Buchan's snatched from the neglected shelf; / Where sad repletion heaves the piteous sigh, / For ever looking round for sympathy. / And then to mark the calm old Tabby, who / To find her way into such scenes is sure, / Engaged to physic and to lecture, too, / With tranquil air, so solemnly demure, / Preparing drenches, and, with cautious stops, / Counting the nicely-regulated drops. / While the grim patient, with averted face, / Indulges in contortions wild and strange, / Sad, as if doctors had pronounced his case, / Such that to hope, no miracle could change : / The dose to swallow forced at last to dare, / How comical the grin of his despair !"—Dagley, loc. cit.

On a table next to the sick man is a book by: "Buchan", i.e. Domestic medicine by William Buchan

[London] : [John Warren], [1821]

1 print : etching

Taking physic. R. Dagley del. ; W.H. Brooke sculp.

Not found in: British Museum Catalogue of political and personal satires, London 1870-1954

Wellcome Collection 11880i