Die Modeheirat: 3. Die Untersuchung

This is the third scene in a set of six that Hogarth painted around 1743 as a warning against marriages arranged for money. The young viscount has brought a girl to a French quack's consulting room, cluttered with strange machines and a skull on the shelf. He is holding out a box of pills and seems to be complaining that they have not worked. The pills are mercury, the standard treatment for syphilis, and the dark spot on his neck is Hogarth's shorthand for the disease. Scholars still argue over exactly who has infected whom in this room. Hogarth meant the pictures to be read like a play in six acts, and he had them engraved so ordinary Londoners could follow the whole grim story.