top of page

"The Ill-Sighted Dentist"

Jan San van Ham

The Dutch Depressionist van Ham took it upon himself to record medical abuses in both Holland and the Netherlands. Using a miniature easel and tiny brushes, he was often able to surreptitiously record medical atrocities as they happened, without the knowledge of either the victim or the practitioner.


In the picture at hand we see the notorious Doktor Hansen Feetz performing what he will bill to state MediKare as a molar extraction. Dr.Feetz was effectively blind at any distance closer than 3 feet (0.9 metres), in spite of the spectacles he affected. This meant that his version of dental surgery often wound up as eye or nose removal, or, in this case, the extraction of the frontal brain lobes the hard way. His sister and dental hygienist, Katrinka, was not much better, being visionically challenged as well as stone deaf, although the latter may have been a plus in the era before anesthesia.

 

The identity of the patient has not been recorded, nor his nationality, although he was most certainly either Dutch, Netherlandese or Hollandaise. The doctor's follow up notes record that the patient has become apathetic and unresponsive, and he suggests pulling the molar on the opposite side to balance the humors.


The artist's other works in this exposé include "The Inadvertent Autopsy," "The Reckless Circumcision," and "Colonel Koopstadt's Hysterectomy." Van Ham's career came to a sudden end when he awoke one morning to find all his major organs in a bowl alongside his bed.

 

BACK          NEXT

bottom of page