Doctor and Mrs Syntax, with other elderly people, taking laughing gas in the house of a tooth-drawer in Paris. Coloured aquatint, 1820.

  • Combe, William, 1742-1823.
Reference:
12086i
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Description

Dr. Syntax waves his wig in the air while the others present dance and laugh, having inhaled from the huge flask of nitrous oxide on the left

Physical description

1 print : aquatint, with watercolour ; image 10.8 x 18.9 cm

Lettering

Doctor Syntax and his wife making an experiment in pneumatics

References note

W.D.A. Smith, 'A history of nitrous oxide and oxygen anaesthesia part III: Parsons Shaw, Doctor Syntax and nitrous oxide', British journal of anaesthesia, 1965, 37: 958-966
British Museum, Catalogue of political and personal satires, vol. VIII, London 1947, nos. 11507-11516 & 11672-11689; also J. Grego, Rowlandson the caricaturist, vol. II, London 1880, pp. 176 & 247-52; also J.R. Abbey, Life in England in aquatint and lithography 1770-1860, San Francisco 1991, nos. 265-7

Reference

Wellcome Collection 12086i

Creator/production credits

A print in the style of Rowlandson, accompanied by a poem in the style of William Combe, but probably not by either of them for reasons cited by Smith, op. cit.

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