Site Directory: | Main | History | Cases | Reference

This painting shows some progress in medicine - now "mania" (the little flower shape), instead of little demons, emerge from the patient's head when the doctor cuts. The woman on the right is there to symbolize "melancholia" (sadness), with a book on her head to symbolize false learning. At this point, society is still using magical thinking to understand mental problems, instead of what we would call science. The doctor hopes to cure the patient - using surgery as the final option - and allow him to remain in his community.

Even when they didn't use surgery, treatment for mental illness could be extreme. But this oven treatment must be working - notice the flood of images emerging from the head of the patient inside the oven (right hand side). Also note the well-stocked pharmacy available to the physicians. Complex mixtures were used to treat a variety of conditions, including the panacea (cure-all) called "Theriac" - a miscellaneous concoction of sixty or more ingredients. Doctors closely guarded their personal recipes for Theriac. It is anyone's guess what it really was.

People have feared plagues throughout history. After years with no plague, one would spring up and wipe out towns across Europe and Asia. At the time, nobody knew what really caused them, but they knew contact with victims somehow put you at risk. This doctor is wearing a magic protective hood that works sort of like a gas mask - the long beak holds aromatic magic potions through which he breaths, in case "bad air" caused the plague.

Our modern "germ theory" holds that bad public hygiene, polluted water, and contaminated food were more likely ways to catch the diseases of the time. There were so many diseases around that we rarely see people with visible disabilities in paintings before the 1800's - they usually died or were cast out of society.

People often made fun of physicians and their strange notions about disease - like in this 1809 etching titled "The Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation!" Even the physician's assistant is shown as a demented dwarf.

The "new inoculation" is one of the first vaccines - a small pox vaccine derived from the sores of infected cattle. Its development was a major victory for germ theory, but people were not enthusiastic about being injected with something so crazy and disgusting. Notice how parts of their bodies change into the heads of cows, representing the kinds of things people were afraid might happen to them.

The unknown often brings out the worst in people's imagination. People with disabilities were also vilified and feared. We try to rationalize, but it is easy to see things we fear as manifestations of evil, damnation, or evil deeds requiring punishment.

Next Page (later doctors)

Previous Page (medieval doctors)