Treating Gallery

Medical prescription, satirical artwork

Medical prescription. Satirical artwork titled Of Prescribing Foolishly, showing a patient in bed with a doctor in a fool's hat (right) holding aloft a proposed treatment. This artwork was by the German painter Albrecht Durer (1471-1528). It illustrated chapter 52 of Das Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools, 1494), a collection of morality tales of medieval vices as told by the German humanist Sebastian Brant (1457-1521). This artwork, from the 1497 Latin edition, was reproduced in the German book Die Karikatur und Satire in der Medizin (Caricature and Satire in Medicine, 1921) by the German art historian and physician Eugen Hollander (1867-1932)

© SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Royal Victoria Hospital Farm Colony, Polton, Scotland

Patients plough the land and plant seed potatoes at the Farm Colony (founded in 1910) at The Royal Victoria Hospital, founded in 1894. Together with the Dispensary these formed the nucleus of the Edinburgh Scheme for combating tuberculosis. In 1914, the Dispensary, Hospital and Farm Colony were given to the City of Edinburgh and the Royal Victoria Tuberculosis Trust was founded. These came under the management of the Royal Victoria and Associated Hospitals NHS Trust in 1948, and the North Lothian District of Lothian Health Board in 1974. Date: circa 1910

© Mary Evans / Grenville Collins Postcard Collection

Youthful frolics, illustration from The Works of Hippocrates

STC446004 Youthful frolics, illustration from The Works of Hippocrates, 1934 (colour litho) by Kuhn-Regnier, Joseph (1873-1940); Private Collection; (add.info.: je lui ordonnai de sauter de maniere que les talons touchassent les fessesde; la nature de l'enfant, livre quatrieme;); The Stapleton Collection; French, out of copyright

© The Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Images