Over the centuries, the Health Sciences have been the subject of painting. Their plastic representation has varied in form and content according to a multitude of conditioning factors, while remaining invariable as the scientific endeavour meets the human side in the practice of the profession. Works of art have also been useful for documenting the history of medicine. The figure of the medical professional as a defined person appears in Palaeolithic cave paintings. They were healers who mastered rituals that served as therapeutic methods. In ancient Greece and Rome, the medical profession was not institutionalised and was not even well regarded, with the exception of the priests of Asclepius, the god of medicine.

In the Middle Ages, the medical profession was disconnected from practical surgery and anatomy, with knowledge based on the dogmas of Galen and Hippocrates, which often led to fatal errors due to their inaccuracy. On the other hand, there were the practical surgeons or barbers, who acquired surgical skills in the monasteries and attended to humble people who had bleeding, tooth extractions or minor operations performed on them. Their activity gave rise to the charlatan healers whose model has remained unchanged throughout the history of the art.

In the Renaissance, the first portraits of famous doctors appeared, such as Andreas Vesal, who was the first to publish a compilation of explanatory sheets and texts on his anatomical research. During the 17th century, travelling doctors continued to be represented comically, with the figures of the rural and urban doctor emerging. The former, of a humble nature, was depicted trying to impress his patients, while the latter appeared as a child taking the pulse of female patients in order to charm them. The s. The 17th century was also the century of the anatomists, as Anatomy became a discipline that gradually set aside medieval dogmatism and prioritised work based on personal experience.

In the s. XIX the official painters of Romanticism presented in an idealised and humanist way, sometimes in the midst of research or teaching practical classes to their pupils. Realist painting for its part meant a revolution when it came to its representation, as it became a small part of the exercise of its profession. In the s. XX, the image of the family doctor appeared, who was consulted out of necessity and custom, and whose weapons were the prescription, the tablet and the injection with which they frightened children and adults.

As far as illnesses are concerned, these were represented by artists, sometimes capturing what was happening in the immediate surroundings and others for purely aesthetic purposes. Being ill was and is one of humanity's great fears. Painters have presented this state of defencelessness in different ways, each time underlining the suffering, the loneliness or the lack of freedom it entails. In the Middle Ages, the sick person could be a martyr affected by fate or a fiend who paid for his sins with suffering. Thus, the blind, the lame and the foolish, lost in poverty, roamed the scenes.

As a result of the cult of suffering fostered by the prevailing religion, the figure of the sick person emerged, who remained in bed attended to by family, friends and doctors while awaiting death. The human body, the object of care for the Greeks, and public health, one of the priorities for the Romans, were condemned as the origin of sin, and illness was an opportunity for penance due to the suffering it entailed. If ever there was a disease with crucial consequences in human history, it was the black or bubonic plague, whose high mortality rate in the mid-14th century inspired artists to realise their work. XIV inspired artists to create works in which the illness was represented by death itself. Thus, the theme of death was consolidated in art as an allegory of the banality of the earthly.

The renaissance and representational accuracy of the painters of this period turned the portrait into a reliable catalogue for studying the illnesses of those portrayed. Due to these artists' mastery of colour and detail, skin tumours, boils, cataracts, broken bones, dermatitis, etc. can be seen on occasions. The Flemish painters developed the features of the characters, who appeared on occasions as real sick people, to the point of falling down in front of the viewer. In the Baroque, verisimilitude was sought after, reaching extremes of great crudity thanks to the direct study of executed corpses. There was also an interest in outsiders: dwarfs, mentally retarded people, etc. were often portrayed.

The convalescence or stage of recovery of a sick person after overcoming the crisis of a serious illness was one of the themes that emerged strongly during the 19th century. As a child, they were young women with a sad, sluggish appearance, accompanied by wilted flowers and medicines. These were dark representations, different from the love-sick women of the 17th century. XVII. Romanticism proposed a vision of illness in which the symptoms were intensified to theatrical results, with the intercession of God or the hero being the only one who could save the sick. The scenes of illness were, in some cases, dark and disturbing, a case of expressionism.

The arrival of Realism showed the misery and poverty to which the new diseases of the industrial age, such as alcoholism and drug addiction, led. In the s. XX a greater prominence was given to physical and psychological illnesses or disorders typical of bourgeois life, such as sleepwalking and obesity. The figure of the convalescent declined due to advances in modern medicine, and the figure of the patient in the middle of a surgical operation, completely unconscious, emerged, while surgeons and assistants were ready to operate.

Painting has also taken in the scenes where doctors, nurses, matrons and apothecaries worked, as well as places of therapy for the health of body and mind, such as natural spas or medicinal baths. It was in Ancient Greece that the first scenes of medical consultations appeared, according to the concept we have of them today. In Rome, medicine made significant progress thanks to the appearance of military surgeons, field hospitals and schools of medicine set up by Roman emperors who were aware of the value of doctors.

In medieval art, the sick were seen in hospitals or charitable homes, in private dwellings and sometimes even in public squares. In the Renaissance, surgeons were depicted in anatomical theatres surrounded by their pupils and assistants. The s. The 18th century saw the birth of institutions specialising in the confinement of the insane, and in the 19th century, during Romanticism, professionals were represented on the front lines of battles (although in reality, given their importance, they would only be in the rearguard), although during the Realist aesthetic, a wide variety of scenarios were used.

The laboratory also became a regular place, being represented with pulchritude, order and luminosity. Finally, the vision of hospitals moved away from the model of a charitable home in the 20th century. XX, with a gradual loss of humanity in the treatment of patients as technical and chemical advances came to dominate the different therapies.