Une belle fistule (A Fine Fistula)

This colored lithograph by J-A. Faivre satirizes medical theater and professional vanity. A patient with an anal fistula lies exposed while surgeons cluster around, each studying intently. The patient's thought bubble reveals his delight at being the center of attention—misreading clinical interest as genuine regard. Faivre mocks the medical establishment's tendency to treat human suffering as spectacle and professional opportunity. The print descends from 19th-century satirical traditions (Daumier, Honoré) that used lithography to critique institutional pomposity and class pretense. Medical caricature was stock subject matter: doctors feature regularly in period satire as learned charlatans more concerned with status than patients. This work exemplifies how comic lithography evolved into visual journalism before comics emerged as modern narrative form.