Medicine and Art
Authors: Barry Hoffbrand
Journal: Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2003)

We all know not to ask ‘What is art?’. But then ‘What is medicine?’. Begging the pardon of the writer of the foreword of Alan and Marica Emery's eagerly awaited contribution to the genre, medicine can and does exist independently of doctors. (From the BMJ's view of its journalistic role, medicine encompasses ‘the clinical, scientific, social, political and economic factors affecting health’.) In art as in life, the clinical encounter between doctor and patient is of the essence. Here we see trust (misguided or otherwise), dedication, venality, and the power of the doctor to reassure or to scare but all too rarely to heal. We see the doctor as hero, as charlatan, as teacher, as custodian, as agent of the state, as man of property, as saint and sinner, as scientist and as fool.

Among the familiar images regularly seen in art and medicine books, there are some interesting pictures with which readers will be less familiar. In one such, The Healing of a Lunatic Boy by the contemporary Scottish painter Stephen Conroy, there is no medical presence. The painting provides an image of fanaticism, with male figures in bow tie and sunglasses, all too evocative of Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. The ‘lunatic boy’ is nude and corpse-like, adding a bizarre sexual tension to the picture (Figure 1). Nonetheless Conroy's picture is in the long tradition of images of the healing qualities of faith. Other examples in this book are Crespi's St Francis with a Leper and Lorenzetti's St Humility Healing a Sick Nun (and doing a far better job of it than the physician who has given up on the case). There is a more even balance between the caring and the science of doctoring in Picasso's youthful painting of the bedside of a sick woman. The book's cover uses a 1910 painting of the doctor as hero—Laennec with his monaural stethoscope listening to the chest of a patient. The patient is far beyond such contemporary high tech and the attendant nun-nurse will certainly be of more help to him.



Figure 1

The Healing of a Lunatic Boy (1986) by Stephen Conroy (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh)



The authors have selected images largely to ‘reflect the physician's role in society’ and in this they have succeeded. It must be said, however, that what we see is the artist's perception in his own times as to what the physician is up to. The comments on physicians from Hogarth, Rowlandson and Daumier have to be seen in the context of the personalities of these geniuses and their anti-establishment views of contemporary society as a whole. For each illustration the authors provide an eclectic commentary on aspects of the artist, of the picture and of the medical topic illustrated. I found these readable and informative. The authors have, however, been less than ideally served by the publishers in the quality of some of the illustrations. Several seem to have had the orange hues accentuated, which inter alia gives Dr Arrieta, seen with his patient Goya, an uncanny resemblance to Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh.

I congratulate Alan and Marcia Emery on their book, which will give pleasure to many.