- Creator:
- Alken, Henry Thomas, 1784-1851, printmaker
- Published / Created:
- [September 1826]
- Call Number:
- Print00516
- Image Count:
- 1
- Resource Type:
- still image
- Abstract:
- "A phrenologist, ugly and dandified, standing behind a table, lectures to an informally grouped and stupid-looking audience; he holds his naturalistic brown wig, revealing a bald head covered with reddened protuberances. His Concluding Address is engraved in the lower margin: Ladies and Gentlemen Having thus concluded the hundred and thirty ninth article, under the Head or Section of Propensities: I shall take my leave until the next lecture, by clearly elucidating in my own person an instance of Due Proportion of Faculties: Talkativeness with Gulling, standing First: and further beg to testify, beyond all doubt, . . . that on the Craniums of this highly gifted and scientific Audience, the Organ of Implicit faith Under Evident Contradictions, Stands beautifully develop'd to a Surprising and Prominent degree Dear Ladies Worthy Gentlemen; adieu. Nearest the lecturer is a family party: anxious wife, amused husband, and small boy with a head abnormally protuberant at the back. Two bald men anxiously feel their bumps; an agitated woman presses her forehead. A man inspects a skull. On the lecturer's table, with one of Gall's plaster heads mapped out in numbered compartments, are writing materials and books, two with titles: Treatise on Elementary and Logic. Portrait busts, all bald, stand on the floor; busts illustrating different propensities decorate the room. Two are placed conspicuously on the floor in front of the table, Dr. [sic] Ville [see British Museum Satires No. 15157] and Gall. Others are of Spurzhim [sic], Scott, Shakespeare, W. Clive, and Tremaine. Two of a group of skulls are inscribed Thirtell [Thurtell, the murderer, executed 1824] and Pollard. The busts featuring character (with appropriate expressions) are Gazing Faculty, Slyness, Pride, Sleepiness, Consequence. The book-case behind the lecturer contains, besides books, a skull and a large jar of coloured liquid inscribed Gall, it stands on a large book, Opinions on Men and things; beside this are Lock on Understanding and Aristotle (propped by a skull). The other books with titles are Moore, Lavater [two volumes], Lectures on Nothing [? Outinian Lectures, see British Museum Satires No. 14773]; a rolled document, Doctrino Particularum, lies on two large books: Self Knowledge and Commentana Critica. Treatise on Magic, Harriette Wilson [see British Museum Satires No. 14828, &c], Duty of Man, Mackenzie ['Man of Feeling'], Treatise on Doubt, Philosophers Stone, Combe [two volumes], Treatise on Gold Making, Bells Brain [two volumes, 'New Idea of the Anatomy of the Brain', 1811]. On the wall are three pictures: Bumps, two little boys boxing with huge spherical gloves; Life's a Bumper, a fat 'cit' toping in an arm-chair; Tony Lumpkin, who cracks a whip, and shouts as in Goldsmith's play. Below these are pinned up a pictorial advertisement and three prints. The first is headed by a human eye and the inscription, Sold by Royal Patent Phrenological Hats Adapted to Every Protuberance of Faculty or Organ Yet Discovered, above a cluster of misshapen hats and a little man wearing such a hat; below: To be Had [in] Caster . . . Two prints illustrate bust portraits: Abstraction and Suspicion. The third, Prying, is a print of Paul Pry, see British Museum Satires No. 15138."--British Museum online catalogue
- Alternative Title:
- Phrenological lecture
- Description:
- Title from text above image., Atrributed to Henry Thomas Alken in the British Museum online catalogue, registration no.: 1895,0617.455., Text below image begins: Concluding address: Ladies and gentlemen, having thus concluded the hundred and thirty ninth article ..., Sheet trimmed within plate mark on top edge., Temporary local Medical Library subject terms: Lectures., and 1 print : soft-ground etching, hand-colored ; plate mark 24.9 x 32.6 cm, on sheet 30.3 x 39.6 cm.
- Publisher:
- Published Sepr. 1826 for the artist at St. Peters alley Corn Hill
- Subject (Name):
- Combe, George, 1788-1858,
- Subject (Topic):
- Phrenology, Public speaking, and Audiences
- Found in:
- Medical Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library > Calves' heads and brains, or, A phrenological lecture [graphic]
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- Creator:
- Rowlandson, Thomas, 1756-1827, printmaker
- Published / Created:
- [6 March 1800]
- Call Number:
- Print10026
- Image Count:
- 1
- Resource Type:
- still image
- Abstract:
- "From the bustle and life visible on all sides it would seem that the period is fair-time, when the rustics and agricultural population of the vicinity in general flock into the town, holiday-making. A travelling mountebank has established his theatre in the market place; the person of the ingenious charlatan is decked out in a fine court dress, with bag wig, powder, sword, and laced hat complete, the better to excite the respect of his audience; he is holding forth on the marvellous properties ascribed to the nostrums which he is seeking to palm off on the simple villagers as wonder-working elixirs; while his attendants, Merry Andrew and Jack Pudding, are going through their share of the performance. One branch of the mountebank physician's profession was the drawing of teeth; an unfortunate sufferer is submitting himself to the hands of the empiric's assistant. The rural audience is stolidly contemplating the antics of the party, without being particularly moved by Dr. Botherum's imposing eloquence, these vagabond scamps being frequently clever rogues, blessed with an inexhaustible fund of bewildering oratory, and witty repartee at glib command. Leaving the quack, we find plentiful and suggestive materials to employ the humourist's skilful graver scattered around. In the centre, a scene of jealousy is displayed; the beguilements of a portly butcher are prevailing against the assumed privileges of a slip-shod tailor, who is seemingly tempted to have recourse to his sheers, to cut the amorous entanglement summarily asunder. On the left, the promiscuous and greedy feeding associated with 'fairings,' is going busily forward, and on the opposite side are exhibited all the drolleries which can be got out of a Jew pedlar, his pack, the diversified actions of customers he is trying to tempt with his wares, and the bargains for finery into which the fair and softer sex are vainly trying to beguile the cunning Hebrew on their own accounts. It seems probable that Rowlandson in his print of Doctor Botherum may have had a certain Doctor Bossy in his eye, a German practitioner of considerable skill, who enjoyed a comfortable private practice, said to have been the last of the respectable charlatans who exhibited in the British metropolis. This benevolent empiric, as Angelo informs us, dispensed medicines and practised the healing art, publicly and gratuitously on a stage, his booth being erected weekly in the midst of Covent-Garden Market, where the mountebank, handsomely dressed and wearing a gold-laced cocked hat, arrived in his chariot with a liveried servant behind. According to the old custom, the itinerant quack-doctor, with his attendant gang, was as constant a visitor at every market-place as the pedlar with his pack."--Grego
- Description:
- Title etched below image., Attributed to Rowlandson by Grego., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., Twelve lines of verse below image, six on either side of title: High o'er the gaping crowd, on market day, while Andrew drolls the blockheads pence away ..., Not in the Catalogue of prints and drawings in the British Museum. Division I, political and personal satires., Temporary local Medical Library subject terms: Mountebanks -- Tooth Extraction -- Dr. Bossey., and 1 print : aquatint and etching, hand-colored ; sheet 373 x 433 mm.
- Publisher:
- Pubd. 6 March 1800 at R. Ackermann's Repository of the Arts, 101 Strand
- Subject (Topic):
- Quacks and quackery, Teeth, Extraction, Jews, City & town life, Plazas, Medicine shows, Audiences, Crowds, Peddlers, and Butchers
- Found in:
- Medical Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library > Doctor Botherum, the mountebank [graphic].