Two doctors quarreling whilst their patient deteriorates

A hand-coloured etching published in London captures two physicians in violent dispute — wigs flying, a chamber pot raised as weapon — while their patient, shrouded and forgotten in a chair, visibly wastes away. The caption Doctors Differ and their Patients Die drives the satire home without subtlety. Isaac Cruikshank works squarely in the Gillray-Rowlandson tradition of English print caricature: exaggerated physiognomy, kinetic composition, mordant moral verdict compressed into a single image. The medical profession's vanity and internecine rivalry are the target, not the patient's class or ethnicity — a relatively egalitarian satirical thrust for the era. Prints like this, sold cheaply from Fleet Street shops, trained audiences to read sequential visual irony, the direct ancestor of the comic strip's narrative economy.