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{"id":13747,"date":"2022-04-14T11:00:28","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T15:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/?p=13747"},"modified":"2022-04-07T18:30:52","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T22:30:52","slug":"the-doctors-a-satire-in-four-seizures-1922","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2022\/04\/14\/the-doctors-a-satire-in-four-seizures-1922\/","title":{"rendered":"The Doctors: A Satire in Four Seizures, 1922"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Sander L. Gilman ~<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Originally published in<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/collections.nlm.nih.gov\/HiddenTreasure\">Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine<\/a>, <em>2011.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Elbert Hubbard (1856\u20131915), Arts and Crafts guru and follower of the British reformer William Morris (1834\u201396), is best known for writing the inspirational self-help essay \u201cMessage to Garcia\u201d (1899). In the early 1900s his books could be found in many middle-class homes. He was an opponent of formal education and the professions in general, which he saw as destroying self-worth and poisoning individual initiative. <a href=\"https:\/\/catalog.nlm.nih.gov\/permalink\/01NLM_INST\/1o1phhn\/alma9913064623406676\"><em>The Doctors<\/em><\/a>, his \u201csatire in four seizures,\u201d is similar in tone to other contemporary critiques of medicine, such as Mary Baker Eddy\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/collections.nlm.nih.gov\/?f%5Bdrep2.subjectAggregate%5D%5B%5D=Christian+Science\">Christian Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_13748\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13748\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ht_225.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"13748\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2022\/04\/14\/the-doctors-a-satire-in-four-seizures-1922\/ht_225\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ht_225.png?fit=1200%2C1200&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1200,1200\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"Caricatures of Doctors\" data-image-description=\"<p>Doctor Sunshine — His Medicine is Always Safe<br \/>\nThe Embryo Medicus<br \/>\nYou Sent for Me Just in Time!<br \/>\nThe Hot-Air Treatment<br \/>\nRemoving his Pocket-book<br \/>\nIn the interests of Health! For Seventy-five Cents and the Honor of the Profession<br \/>\nExcuse Me, but it’s surely One on Me — I have cute off the Wong Leg!<br \/>\nMadam, you Have an Incurable Disease<br \/>\nProfessional Services<br \/>\nDefiance of the Microbes, or His Most Innocent Experiment<br \/>\nThe Dead only know his Secrets, and they Won’t Tell<br \/>\nParish Work<br \/>\nOne of the Learned Professions<br \/>\nVivisection is only valuable in giving facility in cutting into the human subject — Dr. J. H. Tilden.<\/p>\n\" data-image-caption=\"<p>Illustrations in the volume were printed in two colors on textured paper. The figure of the greedy, lustful, deceitful, manipulative doctor presented in The Doctors looks very much like anti-Semitic caricatures of the Jew, which were appearing with increasing frequency in the central European press of the day.<\/p>\n\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ht_225.png?fit=300%2C300&ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ht_225.png?fit=840%2C840&ssl=1\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13748\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ht_225.png?resize=840%2C840&ssl=1\" alt=\"Illustration printed on textured paper.\" width=\"840\" height=\"840\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13748\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Illustrations in the volume were printed in two colors on textured paper. The figure of the greedy, lustful, deceitful, manipulative doctor presented in <a href=\"https:\/\/catalog.nlm.nih.gov\/permalink\/01NLM_INST\/1o1phhn\/alma9913064623406676\"><em>The Doctors<\/em><\/a> looks very much like anti-Semitic caricatures of the Jew, which were appearing with increasing frequency in the central European press of the day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The plot is familiar: Mrs. X is sent unconscious and in chains to the State Hospital by her husband, the Reverend Cecil Kelrusey, whose family is distraught that he has married an \u201cactress.\u201d Seizing their young child, he tries to have his wife declared incompetent. The story echoes that of Mrs. Elizabeth Packard, which made headlines in the 1860s when her husband, the Reverend Theophilus Packard, had her committed to the Illinois State Hospital for disagreeing with his theology. Freed after a widely publicized court case, Mrs. Packard went on to found the Anti\u2013Insane Asylum Society and wrote <em>Marital Power Exemplified, or Three Years\u2019 Imprisonment for Religious Belief<\/em> (1866), which provided Hubbard with many of the details for his satire.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_13749\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13749\" style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ht_224.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"13749\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2022\/04\/14\/the-doctors-a-satire-in-four-seizures-1922\/ht_224\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ht_224.png?fit=769%2C1200&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"769,1200\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"An aphorism from <em>The Doctors<\/em>\" data-image-description=\"<p>Most Doctors Evolve The Ills They Profess To Cure<\/p>\n\" data-image-caption=\"<p>An aphorism from <em>The Doctors<\/em>, 1922<\/p>\n\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ht_224.png?fit=192%2C300&ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ht_224.png?fit=656%2C1024&ssl=1\" class=\"wp-image-13749\" title=\"Most Doctors Evolve the Ills They Profess to Cure\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/ht_224.png?resize=400%2C624&ssl=1\" alt=\"Printed text on textured paper.\" width=\"400\" height=\"624\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13749\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Aphorism from <em>The Doctors<\/em>, 1922<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In Hubbard\u2019s play the doctors treat Mrs. X with fashionable techniques such as the \u201crestcure\u201d (presented here as a torture in which the patient is strapped to a bed for weeks at a time, causing her to lapse into despair). The physicians are based on prominent \u201calienists\u201d of the day: the asylum superintendent is Dr. Agnew Weir (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nlm.nih.gov\/exhibition\/theliteratureofprescription\/exhibition2.html\">S. Weir Mitchell invented the rest cure<\/a>); his assistant is Dr. Jean Charlcot (<a href=\"http:\/\/resource.nlm.nih.gov\/101411929\">Jean-Martin Charcot<\/a> was a proponent of the <a href=\"https:\/\/collections.nlm.nih.gov\/?f%5Bdrep2.subjectAggregate%5D%5B%5D=Hysteria\">hysteria<\/a> diagnosis). With the help of asylum workmen Mrs. X outsmarts her doctors and becomes a force for good in the lives of the other patients, introducing \u201chealthy\u201d activities such as gardening and exercise. Eventually she converts Dr. Weir to the cause, is granted a divorce, reclaims her child, and marries the doctor, who decides to run the asylum on modern principles\u2014healthy food, light gymnastics, fresh air\u2014which sound a lot like those of <a href=\"https:\/\/collections.nlm.nih.gov\/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search_field=all_fields&q=John+Harvey+Kellogg\">J. H. Kellogg\u2019s<\/a> Battle Creek Sanitarium. Drugs and invasive therapies are out. The other doctors quit in disgust.<\/p>\n<p>Hubbard, as was his wont, intersperses the pages of the play with artfully illustrated aphorisms: \u201cThe Three Learned Professions [medicine, law, religion] surely need our sympathy, since they know so many things that are not so.\u201d \u201cIs the World all wrong? Reform yourself.\u201d \u201cBreathe more, eat less and think well of everybody especially doctors.\u201d Seemingly an early example of anti-psychiatry, <em>The Doctors<\/em> is more prone to preach the dogma of the \u201cselfmade man,\u201d a phrase coined by Frederick Douglass (1817\/8\u201395) and propagated in the novels of Horatio Alger (1832\u201399). Hubbard is as critical of patients as he is of institutions: \u201cFool patients evolve fool doctors.\u201d Writing for a middle-class audience in the heyday of muckraking progressive journalism, Hubbard planted his critique in the pages of a beautifully wrought, leather-bound, letterpress gift book.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/web.gs.emory.edu\/vulnerability\/faculty\/bios\/gilman-sander.html\">Sander L. Gilman<\/a> is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Professor of Psychiatry at Emory University. A cultural and literary historian, he is the author of the basic study of the visual stereotyping of the mentally ill, <\/em>Seeing the Insane<em>. For twenty-five years he was a member of the humanities and medical faculties at Cornell University where he held the Goldwin Smith Professorship of Humane Studies. During 1990\u201391 he served as Visiting Historical Scholar at the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Sander L. Gilman ~ Originally published in Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine, 2011. Elbert Hubbard (1856\u20131915), Arts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114947422,"featured_media":23436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12763,51014,347145303],"tags":[62758,58401,1487506,3659,5004,116,7056,2088975,598],"class_list":["post-13747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collections","category-guests","category-rare-books-journals","tag-asylum","tag-doctors","tag-hidden-treasure","tag-medicine","tag-mental-health","tag-religion","tag-satire","tag-silas-weir-mitchell","tag-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/HT_225-Doctors_feature.jpg?fit=900%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3xcDk-3zJ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114947422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13747"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23688,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13747\/revisions\/23688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |