Conceit Can Kill, Conceit Can Cure

A coloured etching — hand-tinted in the rapid, commercially efficient manner typical of Regency print shops — shows a flamboyant quack doctor holding court on a wooden stage before a crowd of eager, credulous spectators. His tricorn hat and embroidered coat signal pretension to gentility; a robed figure beside him, likely a legitimate physician, looks on with evident discomfort. Above the proscenium arch, a skeleton holds scales in a grim memento mori. The banner motto, Conceit Can Kill, Conceit Can Cure, skewers both self-deception in patients and the arrogance of the entire medical marketplace. George Cruikshank — inheritor of Gillray's biting line and Rowlandson's rowdy crowds — worked squarely within the tradition of British satirical printmaking whose sequential visual storytelling, speech-like captions, and crowd types fed directly into the comic strip format that emerged decades later.