The scene is the interior of a dispensary with the Viscount sitting in a chair, his child-mistress at his knee. The young girl holds a handkerchief to her mouth as if to hide a sore. With his right hand he holds a pill-box out to the doctor; with his left, he threatens him with his raised cane. A large, well-dressed woman looks angrily at the young man and opens a knife, while the quack polishes his glasses, at his side a skull on the table. The room contains numerous medical and scientific objects, including machines for straightening shoulders and for drawing corks, a dried crocodile, a narwhal's tusk, two mummies, a skeleton, and two pictures, one of a two-headed hermaphrodite and the other an anthropophagi (see Paulson).
Alternative Title:
Marriage a-la-mode. Plate 3
Description:
Ttitle and number engraved below image., State from Paulson., Sheet trimmed within plate mark., 1 print : etching and engraving on laid paper ; plate mark 38.4 x 46.6 cm, on sheet 45 x 56 cm., and Leaf 18 in: Album of William Hogarth prints.
Publisher:
Wm. Hogarth
Subject (Topic):
Children, Crocodiles, Medical equipment & supplies, Nobility, Rake's progress, Physicians, Prostitutes, Quacks, Scientific equipment, Sexually transmitted diseases, and Skeletons
