The Company of Undertakers

A Consultation of Physicians, or The Company of Undertakers is a 1736 engraving by the English artist William Hogarth that satirizes the medical profession.

On a chief, nebulae, ermine, one complete doctor, issuant, checkie, sustaining, in his right hand, a baton of the second.

[4] Taylor, seated at the top left, is winking and holds a cane bearing an open eye, a reference to his dubious ocular surgeries.

The bonesetter Mapp holds a large bone in her hand, and Ward, a pharmaceutical charlatan, is depicted with a half-red face, representing the man's distinctive port-wine birthmark.

[8] The doctors' canes resemble the batons held by undertakers at funerals,[9] and death is symbolized by the black background and the crossed bones at the bottom of the crest.