Adolphe Thiers and Léon Gambetta as physicians conferring by the screened-off bed of a patient representing the Second Empire (?). Colour line block by Lefman after A. Gill, 1874.

The screen around the bed, in the colours of the tricolour of France, has a notice on it with the patient's details: the patient is called "France", aged 19, the disease is "Empire", and the patient entered the hospital on 2 December 1851 (date of the coup d'état by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte). In front of the screen two physicians in academic dress stand; the left one is Thiers, the right one has a protruding right eye (glass eye? or hyperthyroidal?). Between them is a large bottle of chloroform