Summary:

The Agnew Clinic by Eakins was commissioned by Dr. D. Hayes Agnew's students at the University of Pennsylvania to celebrate the seventy-year-old physician's retirement as Professor of Surgery in 1889. It was unveiled at commencement 1 May 1889. The size of the painting, the largest Eakins ever created, is 84 3/8 x 118 1/8 inches. The artist painted the work in ninety days and received a fee of $750. Its frame carries this inscription in Latin: The most experienced surgeon, the clearest writer and teacher, the most venerated and beloved man.

Dr. Agnew (1818-1892), a Pennsylvania native, was a well-respected surgeon and educator who had served in two army hospitals during the Civil War. He was best known for his competence in removing bullets, but Eakins has chosen to show him performing a lumpectomy or partial mastectomy.

The surgeon is shown standing in an enclosure, having stepped back from the operation. He is lecturing to students, faculty, and spectators seated in the operating theatre. Dr. Agnew holds a scalpel in his left hand. He is wearing a white surgical gown.

Eakins has placed the operating table with the female patient in front of Dr. Agnew. Her hair and face are visible, the ether cone just above her chin. Her right breast and arm are shown; the left breast is being operated on. A sheet covers her lower body. The sheet beneath the patient carries the inscription: University of Pennsylvania. Between Dr. Agnew and the bed we see a closed case holding the sterilized instruments. The anesthesiologist and the surgeons all wear white. Dr. Agnew's nurse, Mary Clymer, stands by the patient's waist. She is dressed in a high white cap, white apron and black dress.

Eakins illuminates Dr. Agnew, the patient and her doctors, and the nurse. The spectators sit in semi-darkness, but they are individualized by face and posture. The painting contains about thirty small portraits of doctors. Most of the doctors and spectators have been identified by name (see site at University of Pennsylvania: http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/1800s/1889med/agnewclinic.html). Eakins is standing to the extreme right, listening to a doctor who whispers to him. Because of time constraints, Eakins's mini portrait was painted by his wife, the artist Susan Macdowell Eakins.

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21 butter-hued felt canvases, each with a lithograph of a wig; accompanied by a number of much smaller felt canvases with slogans imprinted on them.

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A bleak landscape of death and destruction confronts the viewer. An army of skeletons massacres masses of people of every age and gender. At the top of the painting, the sky is black with smoke from fires that have destroyed the landscape, as if the land had been decimated by war. Ships lie half sunken in the bay. The middle of the painting features skeletons herding masses into a spike rimmed tunnel; the door of the tunnel is marked with the holy cross of Christ. There is no suggestion of salvation however, for piles of bones, skulls, and intact skeletons fill pens and wagons, and litter the ground. In the painting’s foreground, people of high social status are sprawled dead or dying near more ordinary individuals -- king, cardinal, wanderer, lovers -- all, regardless of their social status, meet Death.

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A suspended skeleton and a beautiful nude woman face one another. The skeleton, perhaps used by medical students or artists, hangs by its skull from a wire. At its feet are cluttered a few pieces of debris – a stone head and foot. A label attached to the skull reads “La Belle Rosine.”

Opposite the hanging bones stands a nude young woman with a garland in her hair. Her eyes look upwards toward the vacant sockets of the skull. Her contemplative expression suggests that she may perhaps be reflecting on her mortality. In her left hand, she loosely holds a garment.

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An old man stands alone, accompanied only by his shadow. His bent body caves under some unknown force, and the man tries his best to remain upright by relying on two canes, one held in each hand. Facing to the front left of the paper, the old man appears to be on his way to some destination; his feet are not drawn with any suggestion of movement, however, and so it appears that despite his intentions, the old man cannot accomplish the simple goal of walking.

Beneath the illustration read the words that constitute the artwork’s title: “He Can No Longer at the Age of 98.” The vagueness of the text’s meaning allows the viewer to indulge a multitude of imaginings of what specifically the man can no longer do – he cannot walk, cannot function, cannot survive independently, he cannot do most anything. Drawn and painted without color, Goya’s lonely and impotent old man offers a bleak outlook on severe old age.

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This unusual collection of contemporary art features full color prints of what might be termed comic doctor archetypes. Entitled by specialty, paintings feature doctors in a variety of incongruous settings that constitute fantastic anachronistic commentary on the situation of the doctor relative to different social groups or social expectations.

"The Internist," for instance, is represented as a modern female doctor in a medieval setting, commenting ironically on the various institutional pressures that come to bear upon women in the medical profession and expectations of the internist in particular. "The Pathologist" is featured getting his comeuppance as the doctor who usually has "the last word" in a confrontation with the figure of death--a skeleton straddling a Jungian snake among a horde of rats on the office floor. Each of the paintings is accompanied on the opposite page by a brief, but informative and insightful commentary by Spence.

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According to the author's introduction, the most "beautiful and informative images of nursing are found on picture postcards" (xi). He has gathered over 580 full--color postcard images of nursing from 65 nations, documenting nurses' work in peace and war time and documenting, often in breathtakingly lovely images, an important part of nursing's history. Postcards from the years 1893 to 2002 (many of these from the "golden age of postcards," 1907 through World War I) follow nurses from factories to flu wards, from battlefields to mission welfare clinics.

The author has divided his book into seven chapters: "Symbols of Care," "Twentieth--Century Postcard Art," "As Advertised: The Nurse on the Advertising Postcard," "Portraits," "War!" "An American Photo Postcard Album," and "Parade of Nations." Each chapter begins with an intelligent, fascinating explanatory essay by the author, and each chapter ends with copious notes revealing the origins and stories behind the postcards. The book has an extensive bibliography and is well indexed.

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The author selected 48 works of art, famous and obscure, which are presented in chronological order as full-page color plates. On the facing page of each piece is a brief essay which includes information such as artist, date and current location of the work. The essays, as well as the introduction by the author, are insightful, well-written, and demonstrate the author’s vast knowledge as a medical historian. Selections include the "Oath of Hippocrates", Studies of the Fetus by da Vinci, The Anatomy Lesson of Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt, The Dwarf Sebastian de Morra by Velazquez, "Muscle-Man from Vesalius" by van Calcar, and First Operation Under Ether by Hinckley (see art annotation in this database).

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A pregnant woman stands in profile to the viewer, with her head bowed down toward her belly and bared breasts. The woman’s eyes are closed and one hand, its fingers curled, is raised so that the palm faces away from her. Perhaps she is praying. A streak of grey angles up behind her head, possibly an abstract halo or wing.

The woman wears a colorful shawl, although her breasts are exposed. The shawl is intricately patterned with swirls and circles evocative of sperm and ova, respectively. A grey skull-cum-death’s head peers out from behind her belly. Beneath the woman and partially enshrouded by her shawl are three women who assume the same position of bent head, closed eyes, and raised hand(s).

All the activity in the image is compacted into a long pillar of sorts, the right side of which forms a fairly straight edge, and the left side of which curves outwards. Behind, a speckled golden-brown makes for a solid background with no perspective.

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A long hallway stretches almost all the way to the end of the viewer's perspective. One solitary figure about halfway down the hall makes a quick exit from our view as it ducks into an abutting room. The hallway is colored in somber tones--browns, greens, and muddy yellows make up most of the coloration. These colors make the hallway appear as though it is composed of awkward rivers flowing across the plane of the floor, suggesting a sort of moat or barricade across which travel might be difficult. Additionally, the archways are not stylistically consistent--the arch closest to the viewer is more plain, more bleak, and seems to cordon off the viewer's end of the hall from the remainder of the corridor.

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