Veldchirurg met een patiënt 1747

Thomas Major made this print called 'Veldchirurg met een patiënt' sometime in the 18th century. It offers us a glimpse into the world of medicine and social class in the Dutch countryside. The image depicts a rural surgeon tending to a patient's foot amidst a cluttered room. The setting is quite crude, with animals lurking, suggesting a lack of sophistication typical of urban practices. The text in the print suggests that the surgeon is of lower social standing than his patient, a minister or secretary of state. This tells us something about the hierarchy of medical care at the time. Prints like this can tell us much about the cultural attitudes of the time. By looking into archives of medical history, we can investigate the social role of the artist and how art both reflected and shaped cultural values around medicine and class. The historian’s role is to analyze these social and institutional contexts, without which the meaning of art would be lost.