Justin Not Bieber: I don't wanna see no doc

Anom., Barber-Surgeons, 1581

On July 24, 1540 Henry VIII by an Act of Parliament licensed the merger the Worshipful Company of Barbers (men of the short robe) with the Fellowship of Surgeons (men of the long robe). The combined guild was given the right to collect the bodies of four executed prisoners per year for anatomic dissections.

Pieter the Elder Bruegel, Cutting Out the Stone of Madness or an Operation on the Head, 1568

Michiel Jansz van Miereveld, Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Willem van der Meer, 1617

Rembrandt , The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tuip, 1632

Paul Ronard, The dissection of a young, beautiful woman, 1864

Camille Félix Bellanger, Une fin à l’école pratique, 1902

Cycle

by Gottfried Benn (1912)

The lone molar of a whore

who had died unknown

had a gold filling.

As if by silent agreement

the others had all fallen out.

But this one the morgue attendant knocked out

and pawned to go dancing.

For, he said,

only earth should return to earth.

Gabriel von Max, The Anatomist, 1869

Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clinic, 1875

The painting was submitted for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, but was rejected by the Committee of Selection. When it was eventually displayed in Ward One of the U.S. Army Post Hospital, a critic for the New York Tribune wrote that it was: "... one of the most powerful, horrible, yet fascinating pictures that has been painted anywhere in this century...but the more one praises it, the more one must condemn its admission to a gallery where men and women of weak nerves must be compelled to look at it, for not to look at it is impossible."

Thomas Eakins, The Agnew Clinic, 1889

Adalbert Franz Seligmann, Theodor Billroth Operating, 1890

Ilia Repin, The Surgeon Evgueni Vasilievich Pavlov in the Operating Theater, 1888

Robert C. Hinckley, The First Operation with Ether, 1892

First public demonstration of diethyl ether at the Massachusetts General Hospital on October 16, 1846.

Georges Chicotot, The First Attempt to Treat Cancer with X-Rays, 1907

Max Oppenheimer, Operation, 1912

Christian Schad, Operation, 1929

Otto Dix, Prof. Dr. R. Andler, 1943

Ubaldo Oppi, The Surgeon, 1913

Otto Dix, Dr. Mayer-Hermann, 1926

Otto Dix had a Doctor friend, Dr. Wilhelm Mayer-Hermann, whom he portrayed in 1926. Both, the Doctor and his portray wound up across the Atlantic Ocean in the same city. Six years after its completion Dr. Mayer-Hermann was donated to the Museum of Modern Art in 1932, where it has remained on permanent display. The good Dr. and his family emigrated from Berlin to Manhattan in 1934, and Mayer-Hermann established a wildly successful ear, nose and throat practice. It is said anecdotally that, until his death in 1945, he enjoyed visiting "himself" at MoMA and never failed to be privately amused by the unkind remarks his portrait elicited from other viewers.

Edvard Munch, Self-portrait on the operating table, 1902

Diego Rivera, The Hands of Dr. Moore, 1940

Diego Rivera, Brain Surgery Mural, 1933

Mural in the inner court of the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Alfred Crimi, Modern Surgery and Anesthesia, 1936

A mural in the Harlem Hospital
via www.columbia.edu/cu/iraas/wpa/murals/surgery.html

Jacob Lawrence, Surgery, Harlem Hospital, 1953

David Teniers the Younger (1610-1690), Untitled

Caravaggio, The Tooth-Drawer, 1607

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Dr. Pean Operating, 1891

Philip Galle (1537-1612), The House of a Man Stricken with Venereal Disease

Hendrik Goltzius, The Physician as the Devil, 1587

William Hogarth, The Reward Of Cruelty, 1799

Gerard de Lairesse, Anatomia humani corporis, showing the abdomen, 1685

Goya, Los caprichos, plate 40, ¿De que mal morira? (What Illness Will He Die from?), c. 1795

In this series of 80 prints, Goya was the first to use the term caprichos (caprices, whims, fantasies) to denote satire and social commentary. "The author is convinced," he wrote, "that it is as proper for painting to criticize human error and vice as for poetry and prose to do so." Here a jackass in suit and shoes takes his patient's pulse.

Dr. Paul Richer, Études Cliniques sur la Grande Hystérie ou Hystéro-Épilepsie. Paris : Octave Doin, 1885

Franz Sedlacek, Beim Moulagenmacher (Moulage Studio), 1932

Moulage is the art of applying mock injuries for the purpose of training Emergency Response Teams and other medical and military personnel. Moulage may be as simple as applying pre-made rubber or latex "wounds" to a healthy "patient's" limbs, chest, head, etc., or as complex as using complicated makeup and theatre techniques to provide elements of realism (such as blood, vomitus, open fractures, etc.) to the training simulation.