Friday we went to St. Bart’s Hospital to see painting #402 “Christ at the Pool of Bethesda” by William Hogarth.  This hospital has been here for over 900 years.  There is a small museum that has documents and artifacts arranged in a timeline that explains some of the history of the hospital and some of the important individuals associated with the St. Bart’s.  We then took a tour that lasted about an hour so we could see the painting.  Hogarth painted two huge epic paintings in the grand stairway, and you have to take the tour to see them properly.  There were several nurses who had trained at St. Bart’s in the 70’s on the tour.  I would have thought they had heard all of this before.  They have a small display case where over time various doctors have diagnosed the ailments of all the figures in the painting.  The guide said that Hogarth may have used actual patients as models when he made the painting.  This is a link to more information about the painting.

http://www.william-hogarth.de/DavidLowe

Aug 01, 2014 London