The abdomen, chest, and brain,” a British surgeon said in 1874, “will forever be closed to operations by a wise and humane surgeon.” In The Knick, a Cinemax drama whose subject is an early-twentieth-century Manhattan hospital, we can see he was soon proven wrong.

The series — whose second season began airing last week — depicts the gloveless hands of surgeons aggressively exploring all three of these daunting body cavities. It’s this bloody medical realism, set to a minimalist score under Steven Soderbergh’s direction, that has deservedly attracted much attention.

Yet the show’s exploration of some of the American health care system’s troubling underpinnings has been at least as compelling. In particular, The Knick intelligently portrays the terrible practice — and legacy — of “medical apartheid,” as well as the rise and commercialization of the American hospital.