Plate 33 from "Los Caprichos": To the Count Palatine (Al Conde Palatino)
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) Spanish
Not on view
In this scene, Goya laid bare the harmful consequences of treatments by quack doctors, exemplified by the richly dressed man whose hand is in the mouth of a grimacing patient; in the foreground, another man vomits, and a third patient sits, possibly also retching. Goya based the print on the drawing (35.103.10) but simplified the final composition. The scene could have been inspired by an experiment by a royal physician, Francisco Javier de Balmis, that used medicinal plants to treat venereal diseases and induced violent vomiting. That controversy, widely publicized in the Madrid press, could explain the symptoms shown here.
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