Morell Mackenzie — 'Disease of the Throat'

Carlo Pellegrini ('Ape') renders Sir Morell Mackenzie in profile — the pose that best flatters, or skewers, a subject. Mackenzie stands erect in a dark frock coat, hands clasped behind his back, chin lifted with professional hauteur. The caption 'Disease of the Throat' is a double-edged joke: Mackenzie was the era's pre-eminent laryngologist, knighted after treating Crown Prince Frederick of Germany for the throat cancer that would kill him in 1888. By October 1887 that diagnosis was already politically explosive — German physicians blamed Mackenzie's optimistic prognosis for delaying proper treatment. Pellegrini's caricature exaggerates Mackenzie's long neck and sharp, upward-tilted face, anatomising the very specialist whose reputation was about to collapse under international scrutiny.