ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Toverkaart of geneesmiddel voor de windbreuken (Magic Chart or Remedy for Hernias)

· 1720

Toverkaart of geneesmiddel voor de windbreuken (Magic Chart or Remedy for Hernias)
This Dutch engraved broadsheet satirizes medical quackery and folk remedies through twenty-four numbered scenes of fantastical treatments and impossible cures. Figures levitate, contort, and undergo absurd procedures—some involving giants, demons, and magical implements—mocking both charlatan healers and credulous patients. The dense grid format descends from German *Bilderbogen* tradition, presenting sequential narrative vignettes that prefigure comic strips. Such prints circulated widely as popular satire, combining bawdy humor with social critique. The coarse caricature and scatological comedy reflect period conventions; the print targets medical fraud rather than any ethnic or class group specifically, though class anxieties about gullibility pervade the composition. This tradition of sequential visual narrative—merging instruction, entertainment, and mockery—directly influenced later European comic forms.

Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/