In the museum of the quack doctor, the viscount Squanderfield holds out a small pill-box as a girl dabs her face with a handkerchief. Coloured aquatint after William Hogarth.

In the museum of the quack doctor, the viscount Squanderfield holds out a small pill-box as a girl dabs her face with a handkerchief. Coloured aquatint after William Hogarth.

The pill-box probably contains remedies for venereal disease. The larger machine is for reducing a dislocated shoulder while the smaller one provides an elaborate way of drawing a cork from a bottle. The doctor polishes his spectacles beside a human skull with syphilitic perforations on the frontal bone. In a cupboard hangs a human skeleton entwined with a life-size anatomical figure (écorché). Above the cupboard, various curiosities are displayed, including armour, moccasins, a giant femur, a comb, a gaper, a model of the triple gallows (Tyburn tree), as well as a glass urinal and a brass shaving dish. A narwhal horn is attached to the cupboard. Hanging from the ceiling is a dried or stuffed crocodile. To the right are two mummy-cases, two paintings of human curiosities, and an apothecaries' cabinet containing pharmacy jars (above) and drawers storing ingredients (below)
1 print : aquatint, with etching, watercolour and gouache

On a machine is a book open at the title page inscribed: "Explication de deux machines superbes l'un pour remettre l'epaules l'autre pour servir de tire bouchon inventes par Monsr de La Pillule. Vues et aprouveès par l'Academie Royal des Sciences a Paris"

Wellcome
https://wellcomecollection.org/works/gf99bxmc

R. Paulson, Hogarth's graphic works, London 1989, 3rd edition, related to 160