‘Leeches: Gentlemen, Leeches!’, 1830

Description

Mounted coloured engraving, entitled ‘Leeches ; Gentlemen, Leeches !’, designed and etched by Edme Jean Pigal and published by A. Sharpe around 1830.

This caricature depicts four doctors in top hats standing round a patient’s bed disagreeing over the most effective treatment for him. On the right the patient lies slumped half-out of his bed, partly concealed by a doctor facing a group of three of his fellows. The doctor tears up the prescriptions of his fellows inscribed “Good W[—-], An Emetic, Bleed him.” while declaiming “Leeches ; Gentlemen, Leeches !”.

On a small bedside table is a clyster syringe. The traditional view of the medical practitioner depicted in caricatures is of a figure of limited expertise; this perception is not without some validity.

In reality the medical practitioner for most of this period had negligible scientific medical knowledge and with only very limited choice of medication or treatment at his disposal, frequently offered little hope of providing an effective cure.