The third scene in the series of six paintings by Hogarth titled Marriage A-la Mode is set in the consulting room of the French doctor M. de la Pillule. Viscount Squanderfield is accompanied by a sickly looking little girl and a woman with a folding pocket-knife who is probably the girl’s mother and madam.
The woman’s sleeves are cut from the same gold brocade as the little girl’s skirt which, as well as the apron, is far too long, suggesting she may be wearing her mother’s clothes. The tattoo ‘FC’ above the woman’s left breast was inflicted on convicted prostitutes, and it seems she has consigned her daughter to the same profession. Her dress is too gaudy to be ladylike and she has black spots on her face to indicate that she, like the Viscount and the doctor himself, is infected with venereal disease. She appears furious that the Viscount has infected her daughter. Whether it was he who infected the child is far from certain but it seems likely he will have to pay handsome damages.
The little girl stands between the Viscount’s open legs, while he sits with a pill box beside his groin, suggesting that she is ‘his’ girl and that they are both there to be treated for a sexually transmitted disease. Brandishing his cane, the Viscount seems to be protesting that the doctor’s pills don't work. The pills are quite clearly black, matching the black mark on the Viscount’s neck that Hogarth uses to denote syphilis. The main treatment for venereal disease at this time was pills made from mercury. Veneral disease was rife during this period and easily caught, but not so easily cured.
The doctor himself is riddled with the disease – the sunken bridge of his nose, his bulging forehead, thick lips, probable toothlessness and deformed legs are all consistent with an advanced degree of congenital syphilis. The skull on the table is pocked with small black holes which indicate erosions caused by the disease. It seems unlikely that the doctor’s pills will work if he cannot cure himself.
His consulting room is full of extraordinary objects which suggest that he practises as a physician, surgeon, barber-surgeon, apothecary and chemist. The alarming metal machines on the right are described in the open book as used for setting shoulders and drawing corks. The cabinet behind the Viscount displays a narwhal horn, a pile of bricks, a barber’s shaving bowl, a large urine flask, a head that might act as an apothecary’s shop sign, a giant’s femur, a stuffed crocodile and an ostrich egg, among other curiosities.
The skeleton in the cupboard seems to be propositioning the anatomical model, associating illicit sex with death – and suggesting that something is going on behind the Viscount’s back. The tripod on the top of the cupboard above the anatomical model’s head is a presage of the three-sided gallows tree which will feature in the final scene of this series of paintings. It may also refer to the anatomical model’s own origin – the only corpses which anatomists could lawfully obtain were those of executed criminals.
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