First, Do No Harm

This painting depicts a woman in obstetric position, facing a figure who is at once a physician and the Grim Reaper.

Because while she believes she is being cared for, she is in fact being fatally contaminated by the very hands she trusted.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, a deadly epidemic of puerperal fever swept across Europe. Thousands of women, in labour or in the immediate postpartum period, succumbed to what would later be identified as an invasive Group A Streptococcal infection.

When physician Ignaz Semmelweis finally understood that the disease was being spread by doctors themselves, moving directly from autopsies to deliveries without washing their hands, he was discredited and silenced. His colleagues refused to acknowledge their role in the deaths of their patients. Admitting fault would have tarnished their reputation and threatened what was then an emerging and highly lucrative medical market: childbirth.

This painting dismantles a remarkably persistent myth: the idea that it was the hospital that saved women from dying in childbirth.

For centuries, giving birth in a hospital was more dangerous than giving birth at home. Maternity wards were breeding grounds for infection, and physicians were the vectors.

What actually drove down maternal and infant mortality was not the institution itself, but scientific progress: advances in hygiene, the discovery of antibiotics, the understanding of infectious mechanisms.

Breakthroughs that ultimately benefited all of humanity, far beyond the single moment of birth.

Material and FormThe surface uses a restrained palette of pale creams, muted greys, dusty browns and cold off-whites, tones deliberately chosen to evoke parchment and historical distance.

The canvas is bordered by textured relief work finished in deep bronze-gold paint, giving the overall piece the appearance of an aged document or ancient artefact.

The warm, burnished tones of the border contrast with the cold palette of the central scene, reinforcing the painting’s setting in a distant and unresolved past.

Thank you for supporting slow, intentional art.
Each work carries time, memory, and meaning.
— Rōimata Art