An impoverished father has just come from a surgeon in training, whom he has allowed to draw his blood. With the money he received he has bought bread and laid it on the table for his family, with a bandaged arm. They are both horrified and grateful at his drastic but heroic sacrifice. The setting is contemporary, but accounts of sacrificial acts date back to antiquity. Depictions of contemporary as well as historical moral examples were popular in the late 18th century.