Comical Scenes of Nurses Engaged in Massaging and Electrifying Patients, and Knitting

This colored lithograph by Louise Catherine Ibels depicts nurses performing medical treatments—massage, electrical therapy, and knitting—in wartime France. The exaggerated figures and physical comedy satirize contemporary medical practices and the domestic labor of nurses during World War I. The print exemplifies the caricature tradition descending from Rowlandson and Daumier, combining social observation with comedic distortion. Its sequential vignettes prefigure the comic strip format, using visual humor to comment on gender roles, medical authority, and the absurdities of war-era care. The crude proportions and burlesque treatment reflect early twentieth-century lithographic satire's blend of entertainment and social critique.