The Doctor

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 …