Doctor Death

On the fourth floor of the Wellcome building in Euston Road is a most unusual sight: two large black coffin lids stand upended and swathed in plastic floral garlands. The brass plaques attached to each lid are inscribed with the words Dr Death. The current History of Medicine exhibition explores the issue of death and its relationship to medicine through the ages.

Death is a difficult subject, one which many people are reluctant to discuss. There is a certain amount of discomfort associated with sharing our individual thoughts, emotions and fears about death. Yet stories about death always make the news. Only last week, the story of Diane Blood’s legal victory to be allowed to use her dead husband’s sperm despite the fact he had never given his written consent, again made the headlines. Death is never far from our minds.

Since the days of Hippocrates doctors have been trying to protect their patients from untoward or premature death and their struggle to do so and their varying degrees of success have been portrayed in many different ways; in printed media and particularly in the visual arts from the medieval Dance of Death to the modern day TV series Casualty.

The average British citizen is witness to a large number of fictitious deaths every week through the medium of television and film. Extracts from hollywood films, including Flatliners and The Terminator are shown on a small screen at the beginning of the Dr Death exhibition. There are headphones available if you wish to sit next to a gravestone surrounded by plastic lilies, watching images from Night of the Living Dead flick across the screen.

The exhibits range from a cosmetic kit which is used to prepare a corpse for public view to a card case made out of the skin of the the notorious murderer William Burke. Government produced leaflets are seen alongside a green plastic children’s toy called "Big Frank" which has a DIY transplant tummy filled with little plastic organs that can be removed and replaced. The rooms used for the exhibits are broken up into sections by green hospital curtains.

Sometime during the 14th century when the plague epidemics arrived in Europe, death became projected into a character. This character was seen by some to collaborate with doctors and was identified with them. In the early part of this century doctors tended to behave as if death was an enemy to be fought at all costs; the death of a patient being felt as professional failure. Today medical students are taught more about death and bereavement, and the Hospice movement set up by Dame Cicely Saunders in 1969 has ensured specialised palliative care for the dying.

A positive consequence of death (if there is such a thing) is the use of organs in transplantation. This concept of the dead giving life back to the living was first portrayed in medieval times when the Saints Cosmas and Damian were portrayed removing the leg of a Christian and transplanting in its place a healthy replacement from a dead Moor.

The varied items on display in this exhibition carry the moral message that death neglects no man, regardless of his status. Doctors have had a dual role in this iconography. They are portrayed as fighting against as well as assisting with death.

A painting in the last room of the exhibition, which is draped in black velvet and lit with candles, shows a surgeon wrestling with the skeleton of death who is trying to climb into the body of a female patient. By contrast another picture drawn by Godefroy Engelmann shows the Doctor in collaboration with the skeleton of death who is riding on his shoulders. The Doctor is smiling as he carries a purse full of money that he has made from the death of others.

This 18th century image of a doctor in collusion with death echoes our fascination today with medical euthanasia. In the States Dr Jack Kevorkian has medically assisted at dozens of deaths at his ‘Mercy Clinic’ earning him the title of America’s Dr Death, whereas in Australia the first ever state-sanctioned deaths recently made the headlines. Elsewhere the malevolent figures of the murderer Dr Crippen and the Nazi experimenter Dr Mengele have firmly fixed the character of Dr Death in modern culture