‘Pain’, 1835

Description

Mounted hand coloured etching and aquatint, entitled ‘PAIN.’, drawn and etched by A. Courcell, and published by anon, circa 1835.

From the mid-1700s to mid-1800s, the effects of medication were an important subject of satire. This caricature shows that often to the patient, as depicted through the eyes of the caricaturist, the cure, in the form of a prescribed medication, was often considered worse than the condition it was intended to treat.

Here a seated man wearing a cap, nightgown over shirt and breeches. The nature of the pain is unspecified. Likewise, we don’t know what medicines the sufferer is taking, but he seems to be resorting to more than one remedy. He prepares, with deep disgust, to drink a cup of medicine which he holds in his right hand.

In his left hand he holds a medicine bottle labelled ‘to be Taken Immediately’. His arm rests on a table containing a pillbox marked ‘Pills one Morning and Night’ and a bottle with the direction ‘one fourth to be taken every hour’.