This isn’t so much an analysis as it is an addition of more real-world context.  Lumon’s language is to say the least peculiar, sounding religious and dramatic in office settings (typically considered mundane).  And then there’s the artwork: really visceral, really intense, and frankly really good, paintings are a major element throughout the show.  Instances from both the recent past and from earlier CEOs’ personal lives are the subject of paintings which sensationalize what they are depicting.  Events, places, and people within this one company are portrayed to have some kind of major worldly significance.

 

It has always seemed odd that a large corporation so focused on efficiency and economy would dedicate such extensive resources thusly.  However a brief dive into the history of diethyl ether (posited as everything from the company’s early product to an early means of severance) shows that these depictions are quite grounded in our real-world history.

 

The first public use of ether as a dental anesthetic was presented at a surgical amphitheatre in Boston now known as the “Ether Dome” (there is actually controversy to this attestation, but it’s not relevant here).  This event, in 1846, is now referred to as “Ether Day” and was depicted in a painting by Robert Hinckley.  Interestingly this painting was not produced until 27 years after the actual day, and is a dramatic presentation thereof: several figures who were not actually present are included in the painting, “painted into history.”

 

Interest in the event is so thorough that in 2000, contemporary painters Warren and Lucia Prosperi were commissioned to do yet another painting of the day.  The inspiration was to depict the scene accurately, and to this end they applied great effort: consulting doctors and historians to understand how it likely was done at the time, as well as whatever historical photos were available.  A group of twenty in period-appropriate outfits then convened to physically stage the scene of which hundreds of reference photos were shot for the artists.

 

Indeed, other paintings depicting ether’s medical uses exist, such as the included one by Ernest Board (first slide).  Further,Boston’s public garden includes the Ether Monument, a 40-foot stone structure with bas reliefs depicting doctors and patients, as well as including several inscriptions attesting ether’s significance and quotes from the books of Isaiah and Revelations (“Neither shall there be any more pain").  It is the oldest statue in the park.