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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Portraits of patients and sufferers in Britain, c. 1660-c. 1850 James, Douglas Hugh Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 08. Oct. 2021 This electronic theses or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Portraits of patients and sufferers in Britain, c. 1660-c. 1850 Title: Author: Douglas Hugh James The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ You are free to: Share: to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Portraits of patients and sufferers in Britain, c. 1660-c. 1850 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Douglas Hugh James of King’s College London, 2013. 1 Acknowledgements The research for this thesis would not have been possible without the generous support of the Wellcome Trust via the Centre for the Humanities and Health at King’s College London. To the Trust, the CHH and its director, Brian Hurwitz, I offer my thanks. The ideas behind this thesis were first discussed with Ludmilla Jordanova and were developed under the supervision of Anna Maerker. I am grateful to both – particularly to Anna, who took me under her wing at short notice and has ever since been a wonderfully patient and supportive first supervisor. I am grateful for the support of the staff at many institutions: of William Schupbach at the Wellcome Library; of Pamela Forde at the Royal College of Physicians, London; of Sam Alberti, Sarah Pearson, Louise King, Milly Farrell, Kristin Hussey and Geraldine O’Driscoll at the Royal College of Surgeons of England; of Marianne Smith and Emma Black at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh; of Iain Milne and Estela Dukan at the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh; of Olive Geddes at the National Library of Scotland; of Joseph Marshall at the University of Edinburgh’s Special Collection; of Sheila Fox at Durham Town Hall; of Jo Bartholomew at Winchester Cathedral; of Ben and Lynn Miller at the Wedgwood Museum; of Adrian James at the Society of Antiquaries of London; and of all the staff whom I’ve dealt with at the Heinz Archive of the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum and the British Library. For more specific help, I am equally grateful to Chiara Alfano, Clare Barlow, Emma Clery, Brett Dolman, Laura Gowing, Florence Grant, Sophie Mann, Katie Ormerod, Harriet Palfreyman, Lucy Peltz, Jonathan Reinarz, Kim Sloan, Adam Sutcliffe and James Whitehead. I will doubtless have forgotten many others who’ve helped me over the years of this project; I beg their forgiveness as heartily as I thank them. Of course, all this help will not excuse any remaining errors, which are mine alone. 2 In a thesis that tries to use images to argue for the contemporary importance of images, I owe a deep debt to the institutions that allowed me to reproduce the appended figures (detailed below). These included: the Wellcome Library and Collection; the British Museum; the National Portrait Gallery; the Royal College of Physicians, London; the Royal College of Surgeons of England; the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh; the University of Edinburgh Special Collections; and the Wedgwood Museum. I am particularly grateful to Gus Christie for allowing me to take photographs of his private collection at Glyndebourne. Every effort has been made to source high quality images; I beg the reader’s indulgence where I have not been able to procure reproduction-quality images. Friends and family have offered support, encouragement, healthy scepticism as well as many welcome distractions throughout the time I have worked on this project. I send my thanks and love to all of them. Particular thanks must go to my mother, Paula, my greatest champion; she will read these words. The penultimate word goes to my wife, Katy. In many ways, she has been the greatest sufferer of this thesis. Katy has read every word, looked at every portrait and generally dragged the thesis into shape. For this, as for all the other wonderful things she does, I thank her with all my heart. Finally, I thank God, the sine qua non. DHJ Shoreham, Kent December, 2013 3 Contents Abbreviations 6 Note on the text 7 List of Figures 8 Abstract 16 Introduction 17 Debates, themes and questions 17 Contexts 30 Evidence and methodology 47 Chapter I – Representing the look of diseases and illness in long eighteenth-century portraiture 59 Introduction 59 Smallpox 66 Royalty 95 Looking at ill portraits 106 Conclusions 112 Chapter II – Portraits, illness and character 115 Introduction 115 Portraits, health and public image 118 Melancholy 120 Satire and caricature 126 Health, character and appearance: physiognomy and curiosity 128 Deformity (Alexander Pope, William Hay and Josef Boruwlaski) 135 Conclusions 165 Chapter III – Portraits in medical transactions 168 Introduction 168 John Hunter’s patients: portraying medical principles 177 4 Astley Cooper: portraits of patients or ‘portraits’ of diseases? 193 Portraying to a plan: John Thomson’s and William Somerville’s Waterloo portraits 208 Conclusions 220 Chapter IV – Portraits and medical relationships 223 Introduction 223 Publishing patient portraits 227 Alexander Morison 248 Francis Sibson 255 Portraiture and medical affinities 264 Conclusions 280 Conclusion 282 Bibliography 292 Figures 352 5 Abbreviations BL – British Library, London BM – British Museum, London DNB – Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; http://odnb.org NLS – National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh NPG – National Portrait Gallery, London OED – Oxford English Dictionary PMC – Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London RCPE – Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh RCPL – Royal College of Physicians, London RCSEng – Royal College of Surgeons of England WL – Wellcome Library, London 6 Note on the text As I mention in the Introduction below, the list of dramatis personae is very long. Accordingly, I have not seen fit to include the dates of everyone mentioned, but only of those discussed in some detail. Unless elaborated on, the masculine implies the feminine as well. Where relevant, dates before 1752 are referred to in both the Old and New Style. Original spellings and punctuation have been retained in quotations, save for where they have been pulled from modern editions that have amended them. 7 List of Figures Figure 1: P. Mercier, The Sense of Sight, 1747, oil on canvas, 1321 x 1537mm. Figure 2: J. Wright, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768, oil on canvas, 1830 x 2440mm. Figure 3: A view of Room 9 of the NPG, which displays half of the Kit-cat Club’s members’ portraits. Figure 4: J. Reynolds, John Hunter, 1786-9, oil on canvas, 1400 x 1100mm. Figure 5: J. Reynolds, William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath, 1761, oil on canvas, 1549 x 1473mm. Figure 6: J. Severn, John Keats, 1821, pen and wash, 160mm x 120mm (copy). Figure 7: G. Kirtland, Smallpox pustules (day 2)1802, watercolour on paper, WL MS3115. Figure 8: G. Kirtland, Smallpox pustules (day 9), 1802, watercolour on paper, WL MS3115. Figure 9: G. Kirtland, Smallpox pustules (day 16), 1802, watercolour on paper, WL MS3115. Figure 10: The London Gazette, February 22nd1734 (facsimile copy). Figure 11: Anon., William Thompson, c. 1759, line engraving and etching, 126mm x 94mm. Figure 12: P. P. Rubens (after?), S. IOB PROPHETA, c. 1680, line engraving, 204 x 195mm. Figure 13: E. Nunzer, Hiob, 1733, etching on paper, 323 x 200mm. Figure 14: G. Minnikin, Untitled, 1690, woodcut and stencil press, 379 x 510mm.