[The pool of Bethesda] [graphic]

The pool of Bethesda after the Hogarth painting. As described in the Gospel of St John, Chapter V, Christ is shown healing the sick beside the Pool of Bethesda, as an angel observes from above. At the center Christ reaches out to a crippled man who sits beside the Pool of Bethesda, shown here with an ulcer on his leg. Among the others looking for cures is a girl with Down's Syndrome (?), a woman with consumption or tuberculosis; a blind man with a stick; a man with jaundice (or melancholia or depression); a bearded man with gout and a distressed woman beside him with an injured breast; a child in the foreground carries a crutch. In the background, a servant of a naked woman pushes aside a mother with a sick baby. The mistress is most probably suffering from gonorrhea, as indicated by the rashes on her skin. Finally, in the foreground on the extreme right a pitiful man with an emaciated face full of pain and a hand on his swollen abdomen uses a crutch to approach the pool