Focus on this artwork and analyze the The setting.
The painting represents an imaginary scene of a contemporary scientific demonstration, based on real life, and depicts the eminent French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) delivering a clinical lecture and demonstration at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris (the room in which these demonstrations took place no longer exists at the Salpêtrière).On the rear wall of the lecture room is the (1878) large charcoal work, drawn by the anatomist and medical artist Paul Richer,  which reproduces the hysterical pose captured in one of the many photographs taken in the Salpêtrière.
Entitled Periode de contortions ("During the contortions"), it depicts "a woman convulsing and assuming the arc-in-circle" posture: the arc en circle, or Opisthotonus, "the hysteric's classic posture".
Morloch (2007, p. 133), from his study of the actual painting, remarks on the striking and dramatic coincidence that, "in 1878 Richer reproduced the pose in [his] drawing from a photograph ... [and] now, 1887 ... the hysteric is reproducing in life the pose from the drawing."
Resting on the table to Charcot's right "are a reflex hammer and what is thought to be a Duchenne electrotherapy apparatus".
right Jean-Martin Charcot Paul Richer Opisthotonus Paris Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital