This plate is designed, with much humour, according to the rules of heraldry, and is called The Undertakers’ Arms, to show us the connexion between death and the quack doctor, as are also those cross-bones on the outside of the escutcheon. When an undertaker is in want of business, he cannot better apply than to some of those gentlemen of the faculty, who are, for the most part, so charitably disposed, as to supply the necessities of these sable death-hunters, and keep them from starving in a healthy time. By the tenour of this piece, Mr. Hogarth would intimate the general ignorance of such of the medical tribe, and teach us that they possess little more knowledge than their voluminous wigs and golden-headed canes. They are represented in deep consultation upon the contents of an urinal. Our artist’s own illustration of this coat of arms, as he calls it, is as follows: “The company of undertakers beareth, sable, an urinal, proper between twelve quack heads of the second, and twelve cane heads, or, consultant. On a chief, Nebul?, ermine, one complete doctor, issuant, checkie, sustaining in his right hand a baton of the second. On the dexter and sinister sides, two demi-doctors, issuant of the second, and two cane heads, issuant of the third; the first having one eye, couchant, towards the dexter side of the escutcheon; the second faced, per pale, proper, and gules guardant. With this motto, Et plurima mortis imago. The general image of death.”

It has been said of the ancients, that they began by attempting to make physic a science, and failed; of the moderns, that they began by attempting to make it a trade, and succeeded. This company are moderns to a man, and, if we may judge of their capacities by their countenances, are indeed a most sapient society. Their practice is very extensive, and they go about, taking guineas,

Far as the weekly bills can reach around,

From Kent-street end, to fam’d St. Giles’s pound.

Many of them are unquestionably portraits, but as these grave and sage descendants of Galen are long since gone to that place where they before sent their patients, we are unable to ascertain any of them, except the three who are, for distinction, placed in the chief, or most honourable part of the escutcheon. Those who, from their exalted situation, we may naturally conclude the most distinguished and sagacious leeches of their da............