Het Committé de Santé

This is the fifteenth plate of a twenty plate series, Hollandia Regenerata, etched by Gillray based on drawings by the Swiss soldier, painter, and caricaturist, David Hess. For more about David Hess, and the political and artistic context of the series satirizing the newly-created and French-supported Batavian Republic, see my Introduction.

The title can be translated as "The Committee of Health." Like the previous plate Het Committé van Fransche Requisitien, this is a Committee invented by Hess for consistency with other plates in the series and for his own satiric purposes.

The Batavian Republic ("Rep: Bat") is represented by an ugly woman with a linen cap, her breasts exposed, surrounded by doctors (and a couple of French soldiers) trying various remedies to restore her health. The doctor on the left is bleeding her by opening a vein (venesection). The doctor on the right is cupping her, a practice still being used, like accupuncture, to relieve pain. Behind her another man holding the symbol of medical practice, the staff of Asclepius, seems to be trumpeting his universal tincture as a cure-all. Batavia's feet have been placed in a therapeutic foot bath. And a prescription for mercury can be seen before the basin. The French soldier on the left may be carrying a clyster-pipe, a syringe-like device for injecting cleansing medicines into the rectum. The doctor on the far right has been identified by Joost Rosendaal as Willem Leurs, a now Batavian physician whom Hess regarded as a traitor since he owed his initial prominence to the former Stadtholder, William V. In his pocket is an ironically titled "Treatise on Recognition."

As with all the plates in the series, the corresponding page to the image contains one or more appropriately ironic Biblical quotations in Dutch and English and a satiric "Explanation" in French. The Biblical quotation suggests that in spite of all these attentions from her doctors, the Batavian Republic, like Babylon, has not been healed.

Jeremiah, li. 9. "We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed."

The satiric text of the "Explanation" seems to move in two rather different directions. At the outset, it makes clear that the ill health of the Batavian Republic is the result of the "accollades des frêres liberateurs." Coupled with the spot on her cheek, and the prescription of Mercury at her feet (used most frequently in the 18th century to counteract the effects of syphilis) Hess may be suggesting that the Republic has been, in effect, raped by the French.

The second part of the "Explanation" is tongue-in-cheek praise for the new republican world where the lines between the military and other functions are blurred and jobs are alotted without regard to previous experience. Both were grievances close to home since Hess was a career soldier with extensive training and experience displaced by Patriots returning after many years of exile to the new Republic.

L'accollade des frêres liberateurs a un peu alteré la délicate constitution de la Republique régénerée. Mais le Committé de Santé lui voue ses talens et ses soins. Apres avoir êté saignée et ventousée, elle prendra quelques grains de mercure, et ses charmes fleuriront de plus belle. Heureuse époque de la liberté, où les chirurgiens majors portent la dragonne. Pourquoi ne s'accorderait-elle pas avec la seringue comme avec l'echarpe? heureuse époque où on place des gens à talens sans égard à leurs anciennes rélations ! Le citoyen L. possede et mérite la confiance du nouveau gouvernement malgré qu'il a le malheur de devoir toute son existance à l'Exstadhouder.

And here is my free English translation.

The admiration of her brother liberators has somewhat altered the delicate constitution of the regenerated Republic. But the Health Committee gives her its talents and its care. After having been bled and cupped, she will take a few grains of mercury, and her charms will blossom even more. Happy era of freedom, where surgeon majors wear the strap. Why would not she agree with the syringe as with the scarf? A happy time when people are put to work without regard to their old relations! Citizen L. possesses and deserves the confidence of the new government, despite the fact that he has the misfortune to owe his existence to the former stadtholder.

Like most of the plates of Hollandia Regenerata, Gillray follows the Hess's drawing closely. The basic disposition of the figures and meaning of the print both derive from Hess, but Gillray has sharpened every line and, with a wonderful use of shading, given a depth and solidity to the background, foreground, and figures (especially their clothes) that is missing in the original Hess drawing.

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Sources and Reading

• Commentary from the British Museum on Het Committé de Santé.
• "Batavian Republic," Wikipedia
• "David Hess (painter)," Wikipedia
• "David Hess," SIKART Dictionary
• David Hess, Hollandia Regenerata (1797), Nawoord by Joost Rosendahl, Uitgeverij Vantilt, 2007

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