Oliver Goldsmith is well known as a poet, as the author of the novel 'The Vicar of Wakefield', and as the writer of the play 'She Stoops to Conquer'. However he was a jack of all trades who included medicine among his many occupations. He studied medicine at the universities of Edinburgh and Leiden, though there is no record of his having obtained a medical degree, and his studies were much interrupted by drinking and gambling. He settled in London as the assistant to an apothecary (a combination of a pharmacist and a medical practitioner) and then opened his own medical practice, but gradually came to spend more of his time on book reviewing, translating, and writing journal articles. The present painting illustrates an episode that is recorded in the biography of Goldsmith written by James Prior and published in 1837.