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.

Frederick Parkes Weber

Date:: 1914

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.

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and the letterpress (by W. Combe) describes how grieved the under- taker was when his friend Nostrum died so suddenly at his door. His wife explained that it was another job for him, and nothing to be sorry about, but— “ ‘ You foolish woman,’ he replied, ‘ Old Nostrum, there, stretched on the ground. Was the best friend I ever found. . . . How shall we undertakers thrive With Doctors who keep folks alive ? . . . We’ve cause to grieve—say what you will; For, when Quacks die, they cease to kill.’” Similar allusions to the undertaker are of course very frequent. Thus, in “ The Apothecary’s Prayer,” by G. M. Woodward (engraved by Thomas Rowlandson in 1801, and published by R. Ackermann, at 101, Strand, London), the Apothecary prays to Aesculapius that people may be ill and require medicines, and mentions that his neighbour. Crape, the undertaker, is suffering considerably by his (the Apothecary’s) want of practice. I have seen two little English engravings, signed “ W. E. G.,” not dated, but apparently of the early part of the nineteenth century, which might be mentioned in this connexion. One of them depicts an apothecary on a horse which is running away and knocking people over. The inscription below is, ‘‘ What could be expected of a horse with an apothecary on his back ? ” Below this are the words “ Newcastle Apothecary.” The other shows a huge widely open mouth, into which a funeral procession of medicine bottles is entering; at the rear of this procession come little figures of Death and the Doctor, apparently good friends, and chatting with each other. The title “ A Medical Allegory,” is inscribed below this print, on a mortar made out of a human skull with a long bone in it as pestle. Amongst the caricatures of Medical Consultations (e.g., by L. Boilly, 1760) a remarkable one figured, after C. Motte, by Lucien Nass (” Curiosites Medico-Artistiques,” Paris, first series, p. 6), represents four consultants seated in the patient’s room. One of them, with much gesticulation, is explaining his views of the case in an excited manner ; his discourse has had a soporific effect, not on his patient, but on his colleagues, and even Death (represented as a skeleton holding a scythe), comfortably seated on the ground behind the chair of one of the physicians, appears to have fallen into a doze. An eighteenth century print of John Lightbody constituting the frontispiece to “A Physical Vade Mecum ” (London, 1741), by Theophilus Philanthropos (Robert Poole, 1708-52), illustrates the

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