Light glints off his forehead, and his visage is stern, calm, and surrounded by a halo of gray-white hair. The bloody fingers of his right hand hold a blood-tipped scalpel. He appears to have just made an incision and is turning away to demonstrate his work. To the surgeon's left is the patient, lying in right lateral decubitus position, with exposed leg and buttocks. Assistants are retracting the wound, further dissecting within it, and holding the patient's legs.
Blood is on their hands, instruments, and the patient's leg.
The patient's face is obscured by the chloroform soaked towel that the anesthetist is using to administer general anesthesia. The white of this towel and the operating table's sheet are the only other bright white values besides the surgeon's head in this mostly dark painting. For charity cases, a family member was required to be present during the surgery. She averts her head and raises her hands, clenched in a claw-like fashion, to block her view. Although Lister and Pasteur had already demonstrated the bacteriological origin of wound infections and the effectiveness of antisepsis, Dr. Gross was not a proponent of any efforts to reduce wound infections.