Six physicians are seated around a table in the house of a patient and are in agitated disputation. The central physician is holding a medicine bottle. Two other pairs of physicians are disputing in the background. In the far background, left, a patient is lying in bed in desperation. The subject is a satire on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century medicine, inspired by Molière: the physicians are more concerned with their own professional and academic status than with providing succour to the patient. It is presumed to be a cabinet reduction of a larger painting by Johann Geyer, called 'Concilium medicum', which was formerly in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich on deposit from the Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds. It belonged to the collection of King Ludwig of Bavaria I.