Sir William Henry Broadbent — 'Orthodoxy'

Ward renders the eminent physician Sir William Henry Broadbent — KCVO, MD, FRCP, FRS — in profile at a writing desk, pen in hand, papers before him, seated in a plain wooden chair. The composition is characteristic Spy: a rotund, prosperous silhouette, mutton-chop whiskers, pince-nez, and a well-cut dark frock coat conveying professional gravitas without obvious grotesquerie. The one-word caption, 'Orthodoxy', is the entire editorial argument — Broadbent, physician to the royal household and a pillar of conventional London medicine, is gently indicted as a guardian of received wisdom rather than a challenger of it. The satire is social and institutional, aimed at the British medical establishment's self-satisfaction.