Sir William MacCormac, PRCS — 'Gun Shot Wounds'

Leslie Ward ('Spy') renders Sir William MacCormac, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, in the characteristically inflated style of the Vanity Fair plates: a portly, silver-haired gentleman in a dark frock coat and waistcoat, pince-nez dangling from a breast-button, red cravat adding the sole warmth to an otherwise severe silhouette. The caption 'Gun Shot Wounds' salutes MacCormac's celebrated field surgery during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, which made his professional reputation and produced his authoritative treatise on battlefield trauma. Ward flatters more than he wounds here — the posture is confident, almost magisterial — suggesting the subject's eminence placed him beyond savage mockery. The exaggeration is purely physical and social.