Lady Chatterley consults a physician in the 1920s and 2026

Inevitably I’m intrigued by the depictions of doctors in art, and I was much taken by doctor who advised Lady Chatterley (Connie) in the 1920s in D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The context is that Lady Chatterley is married to an older man who was shot to bits during the First World War and is now paralysed from the waist down. He writes stories that “have nothing in them” and runs his mines, but he is effectively dead, imprisoned in his body and his social class. Lady Chatterley is entombed with him, tending to his bodily needs—but unable, of course, to have sex with him. She is drained and exhausted, cut off from life. Sir Clifford doesn’t care, but Connie’s older sister does, and sweeps into the life of the Chatterleys and takes Connie away to see a London physician. This is what happened. “The doctor examined Connie carefully, and asked her all about her life. ‘I see your photograph, and Sir Clifford’s, in the illustrated papers sometimes. Almost notorieties, aren’t you?…