The Doctor
Chris Barrett, specialist registrar in neurosurgery, Newcastle General Hospital, Newcastle Upon Tyne
chris.barrett@nuth.nhs.uk
The Doctor, painted in 1891 by the royal academician Luke Fildes, is perhaps one of the most positive images of the medical profession to disseminate widely in British art.
Chris Barrett, specialist registrar in neurosurgery, Newcastle General Hospital, Newcastle Upon Tyne
chris.barrett@nuth.nhs.uk
The Doctor, painted in 1891 by the royal academician Luke Fildes, is perhaps one of the most positive images of the medical profession to disseminate widely in British art.
It shows a family doctor sitting impassively and calmly contemplating his patient, a child, sleeping fitfully in the grip of a fever. A moment of crisis has passed, and there is little the doctor can do but wait; his scientific knowledge (represented by the oil lamp in the darkened room) is of little use against infectious diseases in the era before antibiotics. The child’s parents loom in the background: the mother distraught, with her head on the table; the father upright, concerned but with confidence in the physician. The outcome is uncertain; the doctor’s quiet stoicism in the presence of disease and possibly death pervades the painting. Nevertheless, although the outcome is ambiguous, it is not devoid of hope, and a few faint rays of daybreak filter through the window to the right.
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