Le Médecin de dames (The Ladies' Doctor)

A dandy sits in an elegant salon with two women, one a young fashionable woman who reclines on a daybed while a chaperone (of lower station) sews. The man is seated, filling out a prescription. He advises, “to calm your nevralogy [a nervous condition brought on by sorrow or anxiety] here is the doctor’s order—tonight you must take a box at the Variety Theater, tomorrow one at the Opera … and beyond that I will try to get your husband to get this green cachemir that you have seen at Gagelin’s that you so much desire! … ” The lady responds, “Oh Doctor, you are a charming man! … ” Here, Jacque satirizes the 19th-century version of retail therapy, mocking the doctors who tell women what they wish to hear, while the women, feigning illness, flirt with the doctors and manipulate them to get their husbands to fulfill their material desires.