‘Taking Physic’, 1850

Description

Mounted hand coloured engraving, entitled ‘Taking PHYSIC’, originally designed by James Gillray, engraved by anon, and published by John Miller in around 1850.

From the mid-1700s to mid-1800s, the effects of medication were an important subject of satire. This image is repeated in the work of a number of artists, 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 depicts a dishevelled, unshaven man, wearing only a night-cap, shirt, disordered breeches, and slippers. He stands by an empty fireplace, his face expressing an extreme of revulsion for the taste of his medicine. He holds a medicine bottle in one hand, and a