From the exhibition
John Abernethy. Coloured etching by Cruikshank, 1828.
http://data.europeana.eu/agent/63272 · 1828

A hand-coloured etching—line bitten in acid, then tinted by workshop colorists—shows a dinner-table confrontation between an overdressed, overfed family and a lecturing physician. The caption identifies the scene as *A Practical Lecture on the Digestive Organs by the Eccentric Doctor A-B-E-Kn-e of Thigh*, targeting the real surgeon John Abernethy, famous for haranguing wealthy patients about their gluttony. A red-faced man slumps at table, a beribboned woman swoons, a small child peeks from behind furniture. The class ridicule cuts both ways: Abernethy's rudeness and the gentry's excess are equally mocked. This vein of crowded, speech-ballooned, sequentially readable satire—directly inheriting Hogarth's narrative tableaux and Gillray's grotesque physiognomy—fed directly into the newspaper comic strip and the modern comic book panel.
Public domain, restored and presented by comicbooks.com http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/