From Hogarth on, many an English artist with a flair for satire has found a ready target in the foibles and follies of the medical profession.  But it was during the long and reactionary reign of George III, and at the hands of Thomas Rowlandson, England’s famous caricaturist, that this legitimate sport was carried to its extreme.  Certainly, no artist in history has poised a more caustic pencil at the shams, failures, and generally antisocial behavior of the medical practitioner.  He was not regarded as a moralist or even a humanitarian; his role is that of an aloof, dispassionate, yet sardonic recorder of every conceivable aspect of the human comedy as it was acted out in the late Georgian and Regency period.