This small boxwood figure, an allegory of sickness, was probably carved in Ulm in South Germany in the mid-seventeenth century by David Heschler (1611-1667), who worked in both wood and ivory. The distressed long-haired figure half-walks forward and half-falls, semi-nude, draped in a loose classicising cloak, his left arm raised to his breast and his mouth half-open as if crying out, revealing his missing teeth. The cat on his shoulder was believed to draw off sickness, and the snake wrapped round his thigh recalls the fact that snake's venom was thought to heal gout and rheumatism. The vomiting and excreting dog at his feet allegorises the expulsion of sickness. The myriad details of this sort dispersed right around the figure encourage the viewer to turn it in their hands, examining it closely.