The sick goose and the Council of Health [graphic]

"A sickly goose, lying in an armchair, surrounded by anthropomorphic pill bottles, medicine bottles of other remedies, each recommending themself as the cure."--British Museum online catalogue

Vendors of various types of remedies consulting about a patient; the vendors represented by their respective treatments and the patient by a goose. A bottle says: "I think the poor goose requires a little of Godfrey's cordial", another bottle says: "a bottle of balm of Gilead would revive him." A water pump is suggesting: "I should recommend him to sleep in wet sheets & drink three gallons of pump water daily" a pill says: "let him have a dozen boxes of Blairs gout pills, & put his drumsticks in hot water." A bottle of ointment says: "His case is exactly like the Earl of Aldborough's so nothing can cure him but Holloway's ointment & pills", an old man says: "Parrs life pills I see are the only things that can save him." Another bottle of pills replies: "Life pills! Vegetable pills you mean, let him be well stuffed with Morison's no.1 & 2." A minute man on top of a book entitled "homeopathy" says: "it's cholera clearly and I should prescribe a little unripe fruit - the millonth part of a green gooseberry."