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The Doctor by Luke Fildes: An Icon in Context

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Abstract

This paper discusses one of the most famous paintings on medical themes: The Doctor by Sir Luke Fildes (Fig. 1), which exemplifies how an ideal type of doctoring is construed from reality and from the views and expectations of both the public and doctors themselves. A close reading of The Doctor elucidates three fundamental conflicts in medicine: the first is between statistical efficiency in accordance with scales of morbidity and mortality and the personal devotion that every sick child or suffering individual wants to receive; the second is between the doctor-dominated market and the patient-dominated market; and the third is between influential and rich doctors (“consultants”) and practitioners of family medicine (GPs).1

Sir Luke Fildes, “The Doctor”, oil on canvas, 1891. With permission from The Tate Gallery, London

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Acknowledgment

The author wishes to thank Mr. Jamshid Sadeghi from Devon for his kind assistance in procuring copyright permissions for the images.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Meir Hospital and the Department of Behavioral Sciences, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Y. Michael Barilan

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  1. Y. Michael Barilan
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Correspondence to Y. Michael Barilan.

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Barilan, Y.M. The Doctor by Luke Fildes: An Icon in Context. J Med Humanit 28, 59–80 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-007-9029-x

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