Richard Mead

June 3, 2020

Arpan K Banerjee Solihull, UK Richard Mead. Mezzotint by R. Houston after A. Ramsay. Credit: Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0) Richard Mead was born on 11 August 1673, the eleventh child of Matthew Mead, a preacher and somewhat controversial character of his time.1 Matthew Mead was a scholar and Fellow of King’s College Cambridge, […]

The Gold-Headed Cane revisited

July 11, 2019

JMS Pearce East Yorks, England Fig 1. Hogarth’s The Company of Undertakers or a Consultation of Physicians Over many centuries there have been several icons symbolic of medical practice. Typical is the single serpent, the Aesculapian wand — a “totem of Medicine”— seen in the constellation Ophiochus (the serpent holder). Serpents in ancient cultures […]