Spaanse Krankheid (The Spanish Disease)

This etched broadsheet depicts a crowded scene of figures afflicted with syphilis—then called the Spanish Disease—gathered around a charlatan healer's table. The composition satirizes both the epidemic's victims and the quacks profiting from their desperation. The Dutch text below details symptoms and fraudulent cures in verse.

The print belongs to a long tradition of disease satire and social ridicule extending from Netherlandish prints through Hogarth and beyond. It combines grotesque bodily caricature with narrative social commentary, using exaggerated physiognomy and deformity to mock the afflicted poor.