A physician and a surgeon attending to a woman patient. Oil painting by Matthijs Naiveu.

  • Naiveu, Matthijs, 1647-1721.
Date:
[1700?]
Reference:
44718i
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view A physician and a surgeon attending to a woman patient. Oil painting by Matthijs Naiveu.

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

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Credit

A physician and a surgeon attending to a woman patient. Oil painting by Matthijs Naiveu. Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Source: Wellcome Collection.

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About this work

Description

A woman patient, deathly pale, sits on a chair, left. Behind her, a physician, bewigged, leans over her to take the pulse of her left hand with his left hand. Her left foot is placed in a tub of water and a young surgeon, kneeling on the right, lets blood from her left foot while holding a tourniquet around her ankle. There are conspicuous signs of wealth: the woman sits on a Goanese chair, an oriental carpet covers the floor, and silken drapes hang over her bed

Bloodletting from the foot is described by Jean-Baptiste Silva, Traité de l'usage des différentes sortes de saignée, principalement de celle du pied, Paris 1727, and by Philippe Hecquet (1661-1737) in his book Observations sur la saignée du pied, Paris 1748

Publication/Creation

[1700?]

Physical description

1 painting : oil on wood ; wood 33.2 x 40.7 cm

Lettering

Naiveu fec Signed in curtain, top right: "Naiveu Fec"

References note

Laurinda S. Dixon, Perilous chastity: women and illness in pre-Enlightenment art and medicine, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995, p. 157, fig. 71
Robert E. Greenspan, Medicine: perspectives in history and art, Alexandria, Va.: Ponteverde Press, 2006, p. 86 (reproduced)

Reference

Wellcome Collection 44718i

Where to find it

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