Doctor Sangrado Curing John Bull of Repletion

Gillray's hand-coloured etching shows a bloated, agonized John Bull — Britain personified — seated on a commode-throne while Prime Minister Addington bleeds him into a hat held by Napoleon Bonaparte, the pair conspiring in mutual benefit. Lord Hawkesbury props the patient up; Fox and Sheridan, opposition figures caricatured as fools and enablers, proffer warming bowls of weak water. The title invokes Lesage's quack Doctor Sangrado, who cured every ailment by bloodletting and hot water — the satire's target is Addington's Peace of Amiens, seen as draining British power for France's gain. Gillray's exaggerated physiognomies, a tradition running from Hogarth through Rowlandson to Daumier and eventually Nast, made the political cartoon the direct ancestor of the comic strip: sequential visual argument, speech balloons, stock characters, and printed-sheet distribution at a penny a look.