The Agnew Clinic

14 years before this, Eakins had painted a Philadelphia surgeon operating in a black street coat, his bare hands and instruments dark with blood. By 1889, when the graduating medical class asked him to honour their retiring professor, surgery had changed. Dr. Agnew and his team stand here in clean white gowns, their instruments kept in a covered case, a nurse in attendance — the new gospel of antiseptic operating, barely a decade old. Agnew is performing a partial mastectomy, stepping back from the table to speak to the students in the tiered seats. Eakins painted the whole thing in about three months. When it was unveiled at the class commencement, the students gave it a standing ovation.