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 |
The Pure Food and Drug Act was passed in 1906, but bogus and even harmful patent medicines were still plentiful in 1912. |
Advertising Pays
Harrison Cady |
Might Orson Lowell be drawing the same nurse and doctor that appeared on his magazine cover? |
$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:  |
A Noted Vivisector is Greeted at the Pearly Gates by Some of His Victims
Herbert Merrill Wilder |
Life's cover price is 10 cents. But for $2 one can get a postpaid copy of Sexology, illustrated.
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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 |
Note: I'm not so familiar with these 1912 artists. Please inform me if you can identify the Life cartoonists here I've given up on.
Of course, there's more. You can see the whole issue here.
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