Johann Gottfried Matthes (Mathes), a "natural healer", taking the pulse of a patient suffering from the dropsy. Etching, 1784.

Date:
1784
Reference:
47558i
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view Johann Gottfried Matthes (Mathes), a "natural healer", taking the pulse of a patient suffering from the dropsy. Etching, 1784.

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Johann Gottfried Matthes (Mathes), a "natural healer", taking the pulse of a patient suffering from the dropsy. Etching, 1784. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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Description

The patient, a man, is suffering from dropsy. To the right of him J.G. Matthes is seated, taking the patient's pulse. Behind the patient's chair, his wife shows signs of distress. Right foreground, a medicine bottle and ointment jars on a table

"Mathes" is identified in the journal as Johann Gottfried Matthes (b. 1740), a "natural healer" or "quack". According to the journal article, he was a wool-worker resident in Linienstrasse in Berlin, who practised medicine. "Er braucht geheime Kraefte der Natur, und Religionsuebungen ... der Wundermann hat ferner eine Essenz, die er verkauft, und wovon er sagt, dass im ganzen Jahr nur eine Stunde sei, die er betrachten und sich derselben mit dieser Arznei versorgen muesse ... Beim Befuehlen des Pulses, den er die Lebenslinie nennt, murmelt er Verschiedenes, und seufzt, und sagt dann: dass er sich von Gott Beistand und Weisheit erbittet ... das er sich uebrigens seine Wunder bezahlen liess, kann man sich leicht denken ... wie gesagt, nur die Geschichte von zwei seiner Kranken ist hier zur Sprache gekommen ...". One of the two cases, both fatal, was the man with dropsy shown in the present engraving. For undertaking medical treatment of these patients, Matthes was sentenced by the Oberkollegium Medicum on 9 October 1784 to two months in the penitentiary

Publication/Creation

[Dessau], 1784.

Physical description

1 print : etching ; sheet 9.4 x 5.7 cm

Lettering

Der Wunder-Doctor Mathes. Berl: Mon. Schr. 1784. Nov. S. 445

Reference

Wellcome Collection 47558i

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