Those who wish to understand the extraordinary achievement of The New Yorker, which came on the scene in 1925, need to understand what the state of American magazine humor had been in the years prior to its publication. Furthermore, with National Doctors' Day coming up on March 30, it seems to be the right time to go back one hundred ten years and take a look at the Doctors' Number of the old Life magazine. Orson Lowell's cover is skillfully painted, but to what end? Just what is the point of the fanciful board game being played by doctor and nurse? Are they competing, metaphorically, for the same patients? For all the craftsmanship that went into it, the 1912 cover illustration seems to be little more than a play on the words patience and patients. And, whatever the rules, shouldn't the white squares be on the players' right?
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| A Game of Patients Orson Lowell Life, November 1912 |
Watson Barrett's cartoon is a good example of the over-rendered and overwritten gag that was common at the time. The elaborately detailed doctor's office looks like a soft-focus photograph. The closest thing here to whimsy is an overflowing wastebasket. The awkward gag requires three lines of dialogue, and in the end it's just a tasteless joke about corpulence.
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| "Where do you say you feel the pain?" "In my stomach, Doctor." "Yes, but—er—couldn't you locate it a little more definitely?" Watson Barrett |
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| Advertising Pays Harrison Cady |
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| $5,000.00? "But why do you operate now, doctor?" "He is recovering so rapidly we can't afford to wait." Orson Lowell |
Here's a bit of somewhat morbid populist theology, courtesy of Herbert Merrill Wilder:
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| A Noted Vivisector is Greeted at the Pearly Gates by Some of His Victims Herbert Merrill Wilder |
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| Baker Electrics |
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| Doctors' Number eBay listing ended March 11, 2022 |
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| Doctors' Number eBay item description |
