Sir

In his Science in Culture article (“A vision of birth” Nature 438, 1084; 2005), Martin Kemp comments on medical allusions in the nativity scene painted by Hugo van der Goes in the fifteenth century. Religious iconography was very important at that time, and the saints present in the painting deserve further comment.

The female figure on the far right with an elaborate white dress represents Saint Elisabeth of Thuringia, a thirteenth-century Hungarian princess who was one of the earliest known founders of a hospital in Europe. She stands next to Mary Magdalene, and is carrying a vase of myrrh, a symbol of healing, which I believe symbolizes the early nursing sciences.

On the far end of the left panel is Saint Anthony the Abbot, founder of the first monastic orders, which ran all hospitals at the time. Next to him, carrying a lance, stands Saint Thomas Didymus (“Doubting Thomas”), who was renowned for his insistence on evidential proof.

These saints made excellent icons for the Renaissance healthcare professionals: doctors, friars and nurses. They are portrayed by van der Goes as equal, in size and importance, to Mary and Joseph and at least twice as large as the donors pictured below.