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“The Bad Doctors,” etching, by James Ensor, 1895.
As the hypochondriacal nephew of seven doctors, I have it on good authority that young doctors often fear they are coming down with the diseases they study, especially in the early stage of medical training.
It’s also well known that they enjoy a good laugh to relieve the tension of the work.
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“Ague and Fever,” print by Thomas Rowlandson, 1788.
Both those qualities are on view in the small but revealing and enjoyable show “The Founding Collection of Prints and Drawings: Bequest of Clements C. Fry.”
The show, which runs through Aug. 29, features only about a dozen prints out of the 75 that originally hung in the corridor that is the entryway to the Yale Medical School’s Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library on Cedar Street.
Apparently the corridor was much longer in 1941, when the medical library opened, and Fry offered some of the prints in his collection to be hung there to mark the inaugural occasion.
With time and renovations the collection has grown larger — now 2,000 prints and drawings on medical subjects — as the corridor has become smaller.
Yet the tradition of hanging art there continues, and it’s a pleasure to have a glimpse of what greeted medical students for years as they rushed between studies, labs, and patients.
By the evidence, Clements Fry had a fine sense of humor, especially when it came to his own profession.
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“Portrait of a Man Protecting Himself from Cholera,” lithograph, from a Munich newspaper, 1831
This German lithograph satirizes all you can do to prevent cholera from getting you. The print, dating from the time of a terrible outbreak in 1831, makes fun of silly but obviously widespread quack preventatives, but also captures the anxiety and hysteria that often accompanied diseases for which doctors had little to offer.
The lithograph’s caption, which was issued in Munich at the time of a cholera epidemic, enumerates the faux cures, including placing a bag of warm sand over the heart and two jugs of water tied to the legs.
Then it concludes, satirically, with “by exactly following these directions you may be certain that the Cholera will attack [attach] you first.”
Rowlandson’s print, which apparently appeared during a flu epidemic, captures the experience of chills and fever. Fry became especially interested in a collection of Rowlandson’s work published some years later, called “The Hypochondriac.”
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“Old Women in Hospital,” Edvard Munch, etching, 1902.
When the collection’s offerings grow more serious, as in Edvard Munch’s realistic etching “Old Woman in Hospital,” the interest declines, at least for this viewer. I would like to see more hypochondria revealed, along with patients’ exasperation for their doctor’s cures, such as comes through with needle-point power in the two works representative of the Belgian artist James Ensor included in the library’s selection.
The label beneath the Munch reads, of the whole collection: “Always on view in the corridor of the medical library, Fry’s collection also has brought pleasure to generations of medical students and faculty which is the audience with which he most sought to share.”
Amen to that.