‘Taking Physic’, 1810

Description

Mounted etching, uncoloured, entitled ‘TAKING PHYSIC’, drawn by Richard Dagley, engraved by William Henry Brooke, and published by John Warren, around 1810.

From the mid-1700s to mid-1800s, the effects of medication were an important subject of satire. This caricature is an image repeated in the work of a number of artists and it expresses through the anguish and facial distortion of the patient the horrible taste of the medicine.

This was a very real problem as many forms of oral medicine were highly unpalatable and little was effective to disguise the taste. 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.

This version of ‘TAKING PHYSIC’ depicts a man seated in front of a screen, wearing a cap and nightgown with dishevelled stockings. He throws up his arms in horror and turns his head away from a nurse in a gown and cap pouring medicine into a bowl. Next to h