When Barbara Hepworth was asked to witness surgery, she hated the idea. One of her daughters was hospitalized and the truth is, seeing her in plaster from head to toe, the sculptor noticed the similarity between the shapes of the plaster and her own work in the workshop, but from there she had to get into an operating theater. a distance she didn’t want to cover. Perhaps out of deference to the art-loving surgeon who had not only helped heal the girl but also to cover the costs of the treatment, he finally agreed, and in 1947 attended the first surgery, not without first ensuring an escape route ‘ just in case it was necessary. unable to bear the scene. There was no need to flee, for what he saw captivated Hepworth in form and content: sophisticated figures, combined under scrubs and surgical masks and scripted based on the urgency of every moment and the eternal conflict between life and deathalthough that first operation was no more than a regular hip operation. The exact choreography of each movement, the concerted effort of the medical team, the rhythm and tension between eyes and hands shared for her the timelessness of a Masaccio or Della Francesca hagiography and the meaning of a classical frieze. “There is an affinity between what doctors and artists do,” he said later. “Both professions are based on a calling with unforgivable consequences and both require manual dexterity. Medicine tries to restore body and mind; just like artHe never loses sight of an ideal and combines science and ideas to better understand life.
The result of that fascination was almost three years of work, sometimes nine consecutive hours in the operating theater and eighty ‘Hospital Drawings’, which are one of the most distinctive parts of his work. Some are quick sketches; others mix oil, enamel, pastels and charcoal to capture meaningful scenes almost sacramental that will surprise anyone Barbara Hepworth has on file in the post-war radical abstraction section.
Even in the aseptic liturgy of a modern operating room, the trace of the myth of Persephone and Hades remains. Art reflects the pursuit of human science to understand and control pain, sickness and death from the drawing of Achilles bandaging a wound with Patroclus on a 2,550-year-old kylix, to Hans Baldung’s medieval knight ‘Grien’, tearing a young girl from a skeleton’s embrace, or ‘The Doctor, Death and girl ‘, who portrayed Hitler’s favorite painter, Ivo Saliger, as it is, as a push and pull fight.
Art reflects human science’s striving to dominate disease
It was not easy to conclude that this effort was worthwhile; that disease arises from natural causes and not from divine will. It’s something that although it was the result of a trial, Hippocrates is usually thankedas the decisive impulse to separate medicine and theology for the first time is attributed to him. From the previous stage, among dozens of legends, the attributes of the distant protectors of healing remain: gods such as Apollo, the centaur Chiron, and Asclepius (Aesculapius), whose staff with a coiled snake continues to represent Western medicine, just as the meanings remain exist around his daughters Panacea, Egle or Higía, bearer of the healing cup that represents the pharmacy.
In practice, the separation of disease and superstition meant laying the foundations of the medical profession. Almost everything known about Hippocrates comes from the famous Roman Galen and we know that his broad interests were enormous, both the ethical subtleties of the new profession and the ease of wearing short nails to become a doctor. Despite its significance, most depictions of the Greek physician are engravings and busts after the seventeenth century and his facial features are indistinguishable from those of any philosopher.
Moral strength
What has endured is the Hippocratic Oath that future doctors, whether in the original version or in an updated text, continue to do. The statement they adopt today is often the oath written in 1964 by Dr. Louis Lasagna, which presents a current, preventive and holistic view of medicine without the need to mention Apollo or Asclepius at any time. One of the phrases that draws attention in this ethical decalogue is, “Above all, I must not play God,” an allusion to the specific blend of humility and moral strength required in the practice of medicine. and a wake-up call about the responsibility of the medical professional when, in extreme cases, he has to make difficult decisions within seconds. The ‘Portrait of Dr. Gross’, controversial from the moment Thomas Eakins presented it at the Centennial exhibition in 1876, was rejected precisely because of the protagonist’s attitude and the harshness of the scene in the eyes of an audience unaccustomed to operations on film or television and called Eakins a butcher. The doctor has just left the operating table with an ambiguous expression. His gesture is unfathomable, and the atmosphere of the scene is quite different from that of such remarkable precedents as Dr. Tulp’s “Anatomy Lesson,” which Rembrandt had almost immediately given prestige when he was only 26 years old. Nor does the doctor’s bloodied hand, with the scalpel, as they say, still be warm and dressed, like his assistants, in street clothes. However, the painting is a true testimony to that time. Pasteur and Lister had already published consistent results, but it took another ten years for asepsis and white coats to reach the operating rooms. Eakins was paid just $ 200 for Gross’s portrait, which today is a pinnacle of North American realism and cost $ 68 million in 2006. Agnew ‘, already in a gown, with no blood on his hands and a more controlled anesthetic system than Gross’s ether-soaked cloth, although there were still a few months left for the novelty of the gloves.
Goya or Frida Kahlo painted several canvases in tribute to their doctors
From the Enlightenment and especially in the nineteenth century, the medical profession progressed by leaps and bounds. In ‘The Visit to the Hospital’, painted by Juan Jiménez Aranda in 1889, the daily round of the doctor and the interns is seen as in any current university hospital. A striking feature is the old-fashioned auscultation, in which the ear is placed against the back or chest of the patient. Dr. Laennec had died a few years earlier, not before leaving behind an instrument that would soon represent the trade like no other: the stethoscope. Medicine was redefined every step of the way, and the changes were massive in just ten years. Florence Nightingale also laid the foundation for nursing in the mid-century with her work on the Crimean War, which portrayed Jerry Barret in epic tones. Cleanliness, ventilation, order, tranquility, behind this lay the medieval obscurantism that was dominated by the interpretations of the disease as divine punishment. Bosch elevated the recurring phenomenon of the false doctor, from the charlatan, to the category of great art on a panel painted at the beginning of the 16th century. The ‘Extraction of the Madness Stone’ was based on a popular belief of the time that continued to treat other European painters well into the Baroque era. In a cycle about the life of an Italian saint, Pietro Lorenzetti had reflected another inseparable aspect of medicine in 1341, but that art has rarely been discussed. It’s about medical deportation; the moment when a doctor has to give up the disease. The Sienese painter had expressed it with a shrug that is probably unique in the history of painting.
Gratitude and admiration
Much more frequent is the feeling of gratitude and admiration for the doctor. Of the two times Goya was on the verge of death, the first was when he was 46 years old and led to hearing loss that, according to his biographies, affected his way of painting. The second was already 73 years old and on that occasion, the Aragonese was aware of the crucial intervention of his physician, Dr. Arrieta, to save his life. Out of gratitude, he painted a canvas that ties in with the tradition of the votive offering. He imagines himself sick, barely sitting up in bed while the doctor administers a medicine and the blurred figures in the background, perhaps the Fates, return to the shadows from which they came.
As her medical history shows, few artists have had such painful and long-lasting health problems as Frida Kahlo. The painter Mexicana also wanted to pay tribute to some of her doctors, Dr. Farill and especially the prestigious thoracic surgeon Leo Eloesser, who was a good friend of both Frida and Diego Rivera. Joaquín Sorolla painted several portraits of doctors. Among them are two beautiful paintings by his friend Dr. Simarro. In one he represents the great researcher with several colleagues in the laboratory and in the other, under the microscope at his work table. Despite not being his personal physician, the painter’s admiration is clear. Slightly more ambiguous is the tribute Richard Dadd paid to his psychiatrist, Dr. Alexander Morison. After killing his father at the instigation of the devil, the painter was tied to Bedlam for years when he painted this enigmatic medical portrait.
The professional prestige of Dr. Samuel Pozzi can hardly be deduced from the magnificent portrait painted by Singer Sargent in 1881. However, the excellence of the dandy in the red coat does not detract from his excellent work in the office. Pozzi’s social and professional fame has its counterpart in the figure of the anonymous country doctor, who takes to the road cold, hot, day or night to perform an essential task. Samuel Luke Fildes represented this figure on a famous 1891 canvas that has become an icon of medical engagement. Its success was such that it was reproduced in 1949 on 65,000 panels protesting the nationalization of health care in the United States. “Let’s keep politics out of this picture,” was the slogan, which didn’t stop it from celebrating UK public health shortly afterwards.