Test your knowledge with a quiz
Eakins, Gross and Agnew
Congratulations - you have completed Eakins, Gross and Agnew.
You scored %%SCORE%% out of %%TOTAL%%.
Your performance has been rated as %%RATING%%
Your answers are highlighted below.
Key points
- The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 celebrated a century of American independence with a world’s fair that showcased American progress. Thomas Eakins painted The Gross Clinic to demonstrate advances in surgical techniques taking place in Philadelphia. Samuel Gross was then one of the nation’s most famous surgeons. The depiction was considered too graphic to be included in the art exhibition, however, and was instead included in a medical display.
- Dr. Gross and Jefferson Medical College represented a shift in surgical capabilities at a moment of rapid improvements in the scientific understanding of medicine and disease. Eakins depicts some of these advancements in the use of anesthesia and the type of surgery shown, which built on new understandings of bone regeneration. Notably, this painting reflects early skepticism about germ theory in the lack of a sterile environment for the surgery.
- The Agnew Clinic, painted fourteen years later, reflects a new round of innovation, as the operating theater is flooded in artificial light, the doctors are dressed in white gowns and use sterilized tools, and a professional female nurse is included.
- Thomas Eakins was a Realist painter, carefully depicting the material facts of medical care in the nineteenth century (and including his own self-portrait in each painting). At the same time, he used composition and light to portray these surgeons as modern heroes.
Go deeper
See The Gross Clinic at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Learn more about The Gross Clinic
See a preliminary sketch of The Gross Clinic
Learn more about Mary V. Clymer
Read about the Listerian Revolution, the Gross Clinic, and the Agnew Clinic
Learn more about the history of surgery
More to think about
As the video shows, Eakins’s heroic representation of Dr. Gross and Dr. Agnew helped to underscore the significance of their scientific achievement. How do we commemorate important technological advances, and the individuals responsible for them, today?
