Marriage A-la-Mode: 3. The Inspection

Hogarth's Marriage A-la-Mode: 3. The Inspection depicts the young Viscount Squanderfield at a quack doctor's premises with a young mistress he has evidently infected with syphilis — the moral consequence of fashionable libertinism made medically explicit. The doctor's shelves of patent remedies, the monster in a jar, and the infected girl create a scene combining satirical medical observation with Hogarthian documentation of the quack medicine that preyed on Georgian venereal disease. The painting's specific details — the pill case, the consultation — reflect Hogarth's systematic research into the social conditions his narratives depicted.

Hogarth fills the cluttered doctor's office with satirical details—a skeleton, a skull, bizarre mechanical devices—each commenting on the quackery. The precise rendering of every prop and the expressive faces of the three figures create a richly layered moral narrative.