The RCP archive has many images of the ‘dance of death’, a medieval artistic genre in which death dances with people from all walks of life, from emperors and kings to the destitute and fools.

A physician in cap and robe examines his own urine sample in a glass flask, a ghoulish skeleton dancing behind him. The macabre drawing is part of a sequence known as a ‘dance of death’ from a Victorian manuscript in the RCP archives. The dance is an artistic genre dating from the late middle ages in which death – in the guise of a skeleton – is depicted dancing with representatives of all walks of life, from emperors and kings to the destitute and fools. In this manuscript the physician finds his place between the constable and the astronomer.

Dances of death are a reminder of the fragility of life and how death comes to everyone, regardless of their station in society. Rhyming text usually accompanies the images; in this version death delivers a two-line message tailored to each victim:

Physician. By thy water, I do see: thou must away with me Astronomer. Look not so high: low thou must lie Rich man. Thy silver, nor gold: from death can thee withhold

The satirist Thomas Rowlandson (1759–1827) drew the illustrations for the English dance of death published in 1815–6. In one caricature from the set, a priest intones beside a ‘good man’ on his death bed. A physician (identifiable by the pomander cane he holds to his nose) tries to leave with his fee, but death grabs him on the shoulder before he reaches the door. This is chillingly described at the end of accompanying poem:

Thus, as the pious Churchman pray’d, The Doctor, in a whisper said, ‘My skill in vain it’s power applies:— ‘Tis fate commands; the patient dies. ‘No call requires me now to stay: ‘I’ve something else to do than pray. ‘I feel my Fee;’—‘Then hold it fast,’ Said grinning Death,—‘for ‘tis your last.’ The Doctor heard the dreadful sound; The Doctor felt the fatal wound, And hast’ning through the chamber door, Sunk down, all breathless on the floor, Ah, never more to rise again.— —Thus Doctors die like other men.

Katie Birkwood

Rare books and special collections librarian