Event Title
Jan Steen’s The Sick Girl: A Humorous Commentary on Seventeenth-Century Medicine
Faculty Mentor
Elissa Auerbach
Keywords
Elissa Auerbach
Abstract
This paper focuses on Jan Steen’s painting, The Sick Girl, 1662. In the paper I will examine the painting by Steen, known for his humorous images, of a seventeenth-century quack doctor diagnosing a young woman with the wandering womb, a fictitious disease, and whether or not this painting was an accurate depiction of the seventeenth-century quack doctor. I will look to scholarly research on the painting as well as other paintings completed by Steen and his contemporaries. I will also compare the quack doctor and his practices to the seventeenth-century medicinal records of the wandering womb and its historical diagnostics.
Session Name:
Working Women, Wandering Wombs, the Verfremdungseffekt and the Flower: A Total Deconstruction
Start Date
4-4-2014 1:15 PM
End Date
4-4-2014 2:15 PM
Location
HSB 201
Jan Steen’s The Sick Girl: A Humorous Commentary on Seventeenth-Century Medicine
HSB 201
This paper focuses on Jan Steen’s painting, The Sick Girl, 1662. In the paper I will examine the painting by Steen, known for his humorous images, of a seventeenth-century quack doctor diagnosing a young woman with the wandering womb, a fictitious disease, and whether or not this painting was an accurate depiction of the seventeenth-century quack doctor. I will look to scholarly research on the painting as well as other paintings completed by Steen and his contemporaries. I will also compare the quack doctor and his practices to the seventeenth-century medicinal records of the wandering womb and its historical diagnostics.