Heroes of modern surgery: Eakins' Dr. Gross and Dr. Agnew
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- Опубліковано 18 вер 2024
- Thomas Eakins, Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), 1875, oil on canvas, 243.8 x 198.1 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Thomas Eakins, The Agnew Clinic, 1889, oil on canvas, 214 cm × 300 cm (Philadelphia Museum of Art)
A conversation with Dr. Kathleen A. Foster, The Robert L. McNeil, Jr., Senior Curator of American Art, and Director, Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
A Seeing America video
some reason I always remember this painting from Art History class.. it's a very good painting at that.
I recommend "The Great Influenza" by John Barry, very appropriate for both this Eakins comparison and advances in medicine from the Civil War to the time of the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.
The United States after the Civil War was focused on civil engineering education. The U.S. was building locomotives and telegraph stations. A medical degree was easy to come by and not the intellectual challenge it is today. Gross and Agnew worked to establish more rigor in the instruction and requirements for becoming a doctor, but it was a struggle. President Garfield was shot by a lunatic, and he lingered in excruciating pain for many days while his doctor was putting his fingers in the wound trying to find the bullet*. American medicine mostly had chosen to ignore Lister and Pasteur. The evolution from Gross to Agnew displays the progress medicine made regarding sepsis.
*In response to this issue, Alexander Graham Bell scrambled to invent a device that could detect the bullet without probing the wound with the hands.
This was so inspiring, my goodness. I have so much respect for Drs. Gross, Agnew, and a renewed appreciation for the entire medical community. Thank God that science and medicine have come such a long way and we're still making progress. As for the works themselves, I appreciate what Eakins did in both portrayals - they're still impactful to this day (judging by my own reactions, lol).
Eakins is a star.
@@smarthistory-art-history Apparently! I would not mind watching a few more videos about this artist, for real.
Excellent!
I have the same name as him, and I live very close to philly as well
Terry is also quite near you.
now we have robot surgeons
😂
They are coming along, for sure. Unfortunately MRSA is still a thing, with no end in sight.
Like the impressionism here, only using black/semi-black as a material and not a shading color. You can still see a couple of spectators at the hallway, quite faded.
I agree with how the painter depicts the doctor, but, at the same time, I wonder if the depiction can be influenced by the artist's inner feeling. What if the artist decides to paint him in such a good-looking way just because he is grateful to be accepted in the room to take notes? Or because he may fear the doctor's wrath if he doesn't like the paint? I know I'm just imaging a possibility, but there must be a lot of paintings with this conflict in its lost history. Great video, I loved it.
Ivan The later is more like a commissioned work, I guess there was a lot of effort to keep everyone happy.
Woohoo, science!