J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1802-18 Academician and professor > East Sussex c.1806-20 > Hastings Sketchbook > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner A Cure for Gonorrhoea (Inscription by Turner) c.1809-14

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘A Cure for Gonorrhoea (Inscription by Turner)’ c.1809-14
Folio 8 Verso:
A Cure for Gonorrhoea (Inscription by Turner) circa 1809–14
D07606
Turner Bequest CXI 8a
Pencil on white wove paper, 110 x 88 mm
Inscribed by Turner in pencil (see main catalogue entry)
 
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
Turner’s inscription, continued on the recto (D07605), reads:
Dissolve blue vit[riol] in spring water | precipitate it by lixivium | tartari, known by Effervescence | ceasing; suffer it to separate | and pour off the clear liquor | then wash the precipitate with | warm water, set it by to subside | decant the liquor, repeat the washing till it is tasteless of | salt. filter the solution and | reserve the precipitate. Dis[solve] | [sal volat[ile] sal ammon. in dist[illed] | water filter it mix as much of | precipitate with the filtered solution | as it will dissolve to use [continued on the recto, D07605] 5 drops of the fluid | to an ounce of water | ... a dram of the | solution to ½ a pint of water | is the proportionate medium for injection with ½ a Gl[?ass] every | day during the cure
This inscription is only partly legible by itself but can be read by comparison with its source, a cure for gonorrhoea announced by the surgeon Jesse Foot (1744–1826) during lectures in London in 1790–1 and published in 1792.1 Turner gives a slightly abbreviated but adequate version of Foot’s treatment.

David Blayney Brown
April 2011

1
Jesse Foot, A Complete Treatise on the Origin, Theory, and Cure of the Lues Venera, and Obstructions in the Urethra, Illustrated by a Great Variety of Cases. Being a Course of Twenty-Three Lectures, Read in Dean-Street, Soho, in the Years 1790, and 1791, London 1792, pp.219, 222. See also The Monthly Review; or Literary Journal, Enlarged, vol.13, 1794, p.406 (‘Foot’s Treatise on the Lues Veneris’). The author is grateful to Matthew Imms for help in tracking down these texts.

How to cite

David Blayney Brown, ‘A Cure for Gonorrhoea (Inscription by Turner) c.1809–14’, catalogue entry, April 2011, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/a-cure-for-gonorrhoea-inscription-by-turner-r1131093, accessed 24 November 2024.