Medicine and Art

Edited by A E H Emery, M L H Emery. Royal Society of Medicine Press, 2003, (hbk), pp 112 + x. ISBN 1853155012

Alan and Marcia Emery have compiled a captivating collection of 53 colour plates of health care practitioners and their patients, from the third century BC to the beginning of the current millennium. Each plate is reproduced to a high standard with a facing page of text. There is also an appendix detailing “a selection of medical conditions depicted in paintings”. The editors have been imaginative in their choice of images. Of course, old favourites—like The Doctor (c 1891) by Sir Luke Fildes and The Mission of Mercy: Florence Nightingale Receiving the Wounded at Scutari (1857) by Jerry Barrett—are included. But examples of Eastern art temper the Western dominance, and although most of the illustrations are of paintings, early medicine is represented in sculpture, pottery, and coins.

The textual entries that accompany the plates are of variable length and quality. Some offer an interpretation of the visual effects. So with Sentence of Death (1908) by John Collier we are told that the patient receiving bad news “sits uncomfortably, staring ahead, isolated in his grief. He sees no future. His facial pallor and demeanour contrast starkly with those …