From Hogarth to Rowlandson

Fiona Haslam

Medical imagery is a forceful component of eighteenth-century art and, taken as a corpus, the works of artists such as Hogarth and Rowlandson provide a lay view of some of the contemporary medical careers and of the attitudes held towards members of the medical profession. Dr Haslam places 'the art of medicine' of the eighteenth century in its social, medical, historical and political context and shows how this, together with a knowledge of the lives of the artists themselves, is necessary for a better understanding of that art in an age in which hope was often raised by medical innovation, but all too often dashed. Among the aspects considered are: medical images in Hogarth's early satires, the role and practice of the itinerant quack, blood-letting and surgery, the innovation of vaccination, fashion in medicine, midwifery and birth, medicine and morality, madness and death. This book provides an insight into the use of highly charged and often complicated representations of medicine and doctors in graphic and literary art. It will be of interest to social, medical and art historians as well as to general readers.