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Back from Paris and already 30, Eakins wished to make
a splash. In his great medical machine, Samuel David Gross
of Jefferson College stands as brown as an Amsterdam brick.
Behind his shining brow, we watch his brain think
can even hear it speak. “Look”, he says to the cartoon heads
ranked in rows above him, “I’m reality, this case
nothing else”, the bright point of his knife balanced nicely
in a bloody hand. Some assistant holds the boy’s legs, thinly clad
in gray socks, a second retracts the wound, a third probes
the incision for pus, another chloroforms the face.
To our left, the mother averts her eyes from a scene so gross
it makes a New York critic gag, its pyramid of shapes placed
as dispassionately as an anatomical demonstration
or a tower artfully composed of Cambodian skulls. |
