A Physician Writing a Prescription for a Sick Young Woman

A Physician Writing a Prescription for a Sick Young Woman, in the Wellcome Collection, extends Steen's medical satire from the pulse-taking moment to its aftermath: the physician's written response to the consultation. The prescription was the ceremonial conclusion to the medical visit, the physician's authority crystallised in a written document that translated his assessment into action. For Steen, the act of writing a prescription offered a further layer of irony: if the diagnosis was romantic longing rather than physical illness, what prescription could possibly address it? The act of writing for a lovesick patient was an absurdity that the learned physician's gravity only deepened. The Wellcome Collection's acquisition reflected the relevance of this subject to the history of the patient-doctor relationship and the cultural meanings of medical writing.

The prescription-writing composition shifted the visual emphasis from physical contact between physician and patient to the physician's concentrated writing, creating a moment of near-stillness in which the irony could be appreciated without action. Interior light fell on the writing hand and document as the scene's focal point. Figure arrangement placed physician and patient in close but not physically touching proximity.