The Opening of Pandora's Box

This colored etching by J. Williamson depicts a Lock Hospital—an institution for treating venereal disease—as a source of social chaos. Patients with exaggerated deformities stream from a massive box while a portly physician departs in his carriage, indifferent to the suffering he leaves behind. The print mocks both institutional medicine and the diseases themselves through grotesque caricature, a visual strategy inherited from Hogarth and Gillray. This etching exemplifies how 18th-century political satire used bodily distortion and social commentary to critique authority—techniques foundational to later comic art's blend of visual exaggeration and social critique.