Although the Lock Hospital was founded for patients with venereal disease, its opening was compared to that of Pandora's box when all the miseries of the world were released. Most of the ‘medical miseries' which emerge from the box allegorise some aspect of syphilis or gonorrhoea. They include (left to right) a man beating his dog, a coffin carried by pall bearers, a man being tapped for dropsy, a fat man on crutches, a Scotsman scratching himself, a man urinating, an excessively thin man with a cane, a man with no nose and swollen joints, a chained lunatic, a blind soldier with one leg, and a prone man in a fit (or dead). Meanwhile, a rich, smiling doctor who profits by his patients' debaucheries, drives by in a carriage.

Coloured etching attributed to J Williamson, London.