Exorcism for Curing Smallpox Diorama, National Folk Musuem of Korea, Seoul

A diorama depicting an exorcism for curing smallpox during the Joseon Dynasty (1392 - 1910), on view at the National Folk Museum of Korea in Seoul. More here.

Click on the image to see much larger, more detailed images.

"Animated Anatomies," Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, Until July 17, 2011

While at the AAHM meeting in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, I met a number of fascinating folks, among them Rachel Ingold, the curator of the History of Medicine Collections at the Duke Medical Center Library & Archives. She was telling me about a wonderful exhibition on flap anatomies (images above) that will be on view there until July of this year; here is what she had to say about it:

Animated Anatomies explores the visually stunning and technically complex genre of printed texts and illustrations known as anatomical flap books. This exhibit traces the flap book genre beginning with early examples from the sixteenth century, to the colorful “golden age” of complex flaps of the nineteenth century, and finally to the common children’s pop-up anatomy books of today. The display—which includes materials from the Rare Book Manuscript and Special Collection Library at Duke University, the Duke Medical Center Library & Archives’ History of Medicine Collections, and from the private collections of the curators of the exhibit—highlights the history of science, medical instruction, and the intricate art of bookmaking.

Through the hands-on process of exposing layer after layer of anatomical illustrations, flap books mimic the act of human dissection, inviting the viewer to participate in a virtual autopsy, so to speak. Whether it’s a sixteenth-century hand-colored treatise on the layers of the eye or a nineteenth-century obstetrical guide in 3-D for performing cesareans, these books draw the viewer in. Over time, as advances in both science and printing promoted more widespread medical knowledge, anatomical flap books began to appeal to more general audiences eager to learn about their own bodies’ inner workings. Technological developments in machine printing also allowed for more colorful and precise illustrations than the hand-colored treatises of the early modern period.

A symposium was held on April 18 and we hope to have videos posted from this event soon. To learn more about the symposium, exhibit, see photos of anatomical flap books, and watch videos of them in action, visit the exhibit website. For more information, contact Meg Brown at meg.brown@duke.edu or Rachel Ingold at rachel.ingold@duke.edu. The exhibit will be up through July 17, 2011, and is free and open to the public.

This fantastic looking exhibition will be on display in the Perkins Gallery, Perkins Library, at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, until July 17, 2011, and in the History of Medicine Gallery in the Medical Center and Archives Library from April 13-July 17, 2011. To find out more--or to pay a virtual visit!--check out the exhibition website by clicking here.

2011 Annual American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM) Meeting, Phildadelphia, April 28-May 1, 2011

If anyone has plans to be in the Philadelphia area this week, you might consider popping over to the 2011 Annual American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM) Meeting, taking place this week at the Philadelphia Society Hill Sheraton Hotel from April 28-May 1, 2011.

There are about a dozen interesting looking panels, but the two panels that look the most unmissable to me are the following, both taking place on Friday April 29th: "Museum Practice and the Making of Medical Science: Specimen Collections, Networks, and Institutions in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries," which will include two of my favorite scholars, Eva Ahren and Lisa O'Sullivan; and "Digital Media and New Audiences for the History of Medicine," where I will be delivering a short paper, along with such esteemed luminaries as Michael Sappol and Lisa Rosner.

Details for these two panels follow; to view the full schedule, click here.

Very much hope to see you there!

FRIDAY, APRIL 29
10:15 - 11:45 AM
Museum Practice and the Making of Medical Science: Specimen Collections, Networks, and Institutions in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries
Ballroom E
MODERATOR: Susan Lawrence (UniversityofNebraska,Lincoln)

• Eva Ahren (University of Uppsala) ―Making Space for Specimens‖: Medical Museums and Institution-Building at the Karolinska Institute, 1860-1910
• Ross Jones (University of Sydney) ―No interest in human anatomy as such‖: Frederic Wood Jones Dissects Anatomical Investigation in the United States in the 1920s
• Lisa O‘Sullivan (University of Sydney) Creating Medical Specimens and Meanings: Frederic Wood Jones and the Work of a ―Good‖ Anatomical Specimen

12:00 - 1:15 PM
Digital Media and New Audiences for the History of Medicine
Ballroom B

• Joanna Ebenstein (Morbid Anatomy Library, New York City)
• Susan Reverby (Wellesley College)
  
• Lisa Rosner (Stockton College)
• Michael Sappol (National Library of Medicine)
• Karie Youngdahl (College of Physicians of Philadelphia)
• Laura Zucconi (Stockton College)

Click here to download a PDF program containing the complete and very extensive schedule. More information about the conference can be found here.

Image source: Rhizome.org; no citation found. Click on image to see larger, more detailed version.

Visiting the Stigmatics of South Tyrol on Good Friday via The Wellcome Library, Circa 1840

...In the 1840s there was a steady flow of foreign tourists and pilgrims to the idyllic valleys of [South Tyrol] ... solely to visit two women who were said to have received spontaneously bleeding wounds (stigmata) on their hands, feet, or head like those caused to Jesus Christ when he was nailed to the cross and forced to wear the crown of thorns. One of the two women was Maria Domenica Lazzari (sometimes spelled Lazzeri), and the other was Maria von Moehrl (also called Mörl). The former was known as L'Addolorata (the woman of pain), the latter as L'Estatica (the woman of ecstasy), for reasons which will become clear.

On this Good Friday -- the holiday commemorating Jesus Christ's death by crucification -- why not take a moment to consider the medio-religious condition of stigmata, ie. spontaneous bleeding (mostly found in the female persuasion) on the hands, feet, and/or head, mimicking the wounds caused to Jesus Christ when he was nailed to the cross and forced to wear the crown of thorns?

All of the above text and images are drawn from two recent fascinating posts on the Wellcome Library blog; To read the full articles, click here and here.

Happy Good Friday!

Images, top to bottom (please click images to view larger, more detailed versions):

1. Maria Domenica Lazzari. Coloured engraving, ca 1840. Wellcome Library no. 260i
2. Maria von Moehrl. Watercolour by L. Giuditti after L.G. de Ségur, 1846. Wellcome Library no. 708243i
3. Maria Domenica Lazzari. Watercolour by L. Giuditti after L.G. de Ségur, 1846. Wellcome Library no. 708242i

The Osteology Lesson of Dr. Sebastiaen Egbertsz, Nicolaes Elias Pickenoy, 1619

The Osteology Lesson of Dr. Sebastiaen Egbertsz by Nicolaes Elias Pickenoy, 1619.

Via Elettrogenica.

"Portrait of the Professor of Medicine Jan Bleuland," Pieter Christoffel Wonder, 1808

The Romantic painters -- especially the Dutch Romantics -- were influenced by the landscapes, portraits and still-lifes of the Dutch 17th-century masters. Pieter Christoffel Wonder (1777-1852) painted a fascinating "Portrait of the Professor of Medicine Jan Bleuland" (1818), with the self-confident, bourgeois doctor standing in front of a skeleton draped with red arteries. It could have been part of Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson" of 1632 -- portraying the same fascination with the interior workings of the human body.

Found in a review of the exhibition "Masters of the Romantic Period -- Dutch Painting 1800-1850" at the Kunsthal on the Wall Street Journal; you can read the article by clicking here, and find out more about the exhibition by clicking here. Image found on the Collectie Utrecht website which can be seen by clicking here.

For another peek at Jan Bleuland at work, see this recent post.

Beautiful Irish Medical Photographs, The Burns Archive, 1870s

The photographs above, dating from the 1870s, picture patients who were operated upon by 19th Century surgeon Edward Stamer O’Grady; these photos, all drawn from the incredible Burns Archive, were featured--paired with their original case histories!--in the most recent issue of Scope Medicine in Focus.

Full story can be found here; you can see a PDF of the article--with additional images--by clicking here.

All images ©2010 The Burns Archive; From top to bottom:

1. Patient of Edward Stamer O'Grady
2. A 50-Year-Old Laborer "MM," Admitted Feb 17, 187
3. Once the 27 Ounce Tumor Was Removed, the Patient "Went Home Quite Well."

Amazing Medical Woodblock Prints, Japan, 19th Century

Just came across this really fantastic and unusual collection of 19th Century Japanese medical woodblock prints on the Pink Tentacle website, which sourced them from the extensive University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Japanese Woodblock Print Collection website.

As the UCSF website explains:

The UCSF Japanese Woodblock Print Collection consists of four hundred Japanese woodblock prints on health-related themes. Of those, more than half are colorfully illustrated in the ukiyo-e manner, the remainder being printed single-sheet texts. From the treatment and prevention of diseases like smallpox, measles, and cholera, to the stages of pregnancy and drug advertisements, these prints offer a unique window into traditional Japanese attitudes toward health and illness.

The majority of the prints date to the mid- to late nineteenth century, when Japan was opening to the West after almost two hundred and fifty years of self-imposed isolation. Thus, they provide valuable pictorial evidence for the effect of Western medical science on traditional beliefs and practices.

Five subject areas broadly define the collection. The treatment and prevention of three contagious diseases; smallpox, measles, and cholera; are topics for eighty of the prints. A related category includes prints in which Buddhist or Shinto deities intervene to ensure a cure. Pregnancy and women's health issues form a distinct theme, including several images of the stages of gestation. Because foreigners were thought to carry disease to Japan, the collection also includes several maps of Nagasaki, where the Dutch were confined during the Edo period, as well as prints depicting foreigners and their ships. Drug advertisements from the nineteenth century make up the largest category...

The woodblock prints in this collection offer a fascinating visual account of Japanese medical knowledge in the late Edo and Meiji periods. Collectively, they record a gradual shift, by the late nineteenth century, from the reliance on gods and charms for succor from disease, to the adoption of Western, scientific principles as the basis for medical knowledge. They show the introduction of imported drugs and vaccines and increased use of printed advertisements to promote new medicinal products.

You can view the entire collection on the UCSF website--arranged by the themes Contagious Disease, Drug Advertisements, Foreigners & Disease, Religion & Health and Women’s Health--by clicking here.

I HIGHLY recommend clicking on each image to view larger, richer, and more detailed image.

Image captions top to bottom:

1. Shinto god from Izumo province for preventing measles -- Taiso Yoshitoshi, 1862
2. Pregnancy guide -- Hamano Teisuke, 1880
3. Illustrated guide to parental obligations -- Utagawa Yoshitora, 1880
4. Pregnant women playing in summer heat (5 heads, 10 bodies) -- Utagawa Kunitoshi, 1881
5. Chasing measles away -- Utagawa Yoshimori, 1862

From Pink Tentacle via Ellettrogenica.

"Still Life: The Art of Anatomy," Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand, Through September 12

I just found out about an excellent looking exhibition now on in Dunedin, New Zealand; the exhibition is called "Still Life: The Art of Anatomy," and it frames a variety of historical and contemporary anatomical teaching tools held in public and private hands--including models and illustrations--as artworks in a fine art setting.

Images of the exhibition above and full details below; if you are based in New Zealand, be sure to check this out!

Still Life: The Art of Anatomy
Saturday, 10 July 2010 - 12 September 2010
Dunedin Public Art Gallery
Dunedin, New Zealand

Noted Dunedin based filmmaker and medical doctor Paul Trotman, has worked closely with the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in researching Dunedin's rich collections towards the realization of Still Life: The Art of Anatomy. This exhibition brings together an array of historical and contemporary items, such as Dr John Halliday Scott's elegant anatomical drawings and old master prints, through to porcelain and wax casts of aspects of the body and the latest interactive computer generated 3D anatomical models. Still Life provides a stunning insight into this complex subject and also reveals the important lineage that science and art shares through the analysis, distillation and depiction of the human form.

You can find out more by clicking here or here.

Saint Cosmas and Saint Damian (c. 200 CE)

Cosmas and Damian were twin brothers who lived in Syria during the 200s CE. Under the influence of their devout mother, they embraced the Christian religion that was still outlawed by the Roman authorities. They were both physicians and, unlike colleagues, are said to have provided free treatment. Their growing fame brought them to the attention of the Roman consul, who ordered them to make a sacrifice to the gods. When they refused, they were executed.

Over 48 miracles were credited to the twins, including, amongst others, the development of remedies against plague, scabs, scurvy, kidney stones and bed-wetting. Their most famous miracle involved the alleged replacement of a diseased leg of a white patient with the leg of a recently deceased black man. This legend became increasingly popular from 1200 onwards, and contemporaries would have been in no doubt that it was a miraculous procedure. While amputation was a known, if extreme, procedure, there is no way that a limb from a corpse could have been successfully transplanted to an ailing donor, who then went on to live.

Cosmas and Damian are regarded as saints by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Coptic Christian churches. Roman Catholics consider them the patron saints of medicine and their skulls are venerated as holy relics in a shrine at a church in Madrid. Their saints’ day is 26 September.

Via the Science Museum's unrivaled "Brought to Life" web exhibition.

Click on image to see larger version; Image caption: "A verger's dream: Saints Cosmas and Damian performing a miraculous cure by transplantation of a leg." Oil painting attributed to the Master of Los Balbases, Oil 15th/16th century. Image credit: Wellcome Library, London via Brought to Life.

The Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium, May 19-20, College of Physicians, Philadelphia PA

Friend of Morbid Anatomy Todd Vladyka has just let me know about a rather exciting looking consortium taking place next week at the College of Surgeons (home of the Mütter Museum); highlights include an entire panel devoted to "The 'Art' of Anatomy and Other Collections," which will consist of a presentation devoted to the art of Joseph Maclise (as seen above), and two other presentations entitled "The Exquisite Cadaver and the Evolution of the Anatomic Theater"and "Constituting the Syphilitic Collector."

The opening lecture--"What Mark Twain Might Tell Us (And Ask Us) If He Could Join Us Tonight"--is free and open to the public; $25 for students or $50 for non-students will gain you admission to all the other events.

Full details follow; very much hope to see you there!

The Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium
Through the Lens of Time: Perspectives on Medicine and Health Care
May 19 – 20, 2010

Events on Wednesday, May 19, 2010

2 – 4 p.m. Visit the Ars Medica Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new Perelman Building (across from the Museum’s main building, corner of Pennsylvania and Fairmount Avenues); Hosted by Peter Barberie, PhD, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs [Note: This tour is now full!]

6:30 – 8:30 p.m. What Mark Twain Might Tell Us (And Ask Us) If He Could Join Us Tonight, K. Patrick Ober, MD, Professor of Internal Medicine and Associate Dean for Education, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC; author of Mark Twain and Medicine: Any Mummery Will Cure.

At the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 South Twenty-Second Street (between Chestnut and Market Streets).

Wine-and-cheese reception to follow. This program is open to the public.


Events on Thursday, May 20, 2010

At The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 South Twenty-Second Street

8 a.m. Breakfast – Mitchell Hall

8:30 a.m. Welcome
Rhonda L. Soricelli, MD – Chair, Program Committee
Paul C. Brucker, MD – President, College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Mary Ellen Glasgow, PhD, RN – Associate Dean, Drexel University College of Nursing & Health Professions

8:45–9:45 a.m. Opening Session – Mitchell Hall
The Medical/Healthcare Humanities: Where We Are; Where We’ve Been; Where We’re Going
Moderator: David H. Flood, PhD

• Humanism Versus Humanities in Medicine: An Historical Perspective, Jack Coulehan, MD, MPH
• Medical Humanism/Professionalism Teaching in a Community Hospital Since WWII, Victor Bressler, MD
• Disability, Medicine, and Representation: Integrating Disability Studies into Medical, Education and Practice, Rebecca Garden, PhD
• American Missionary Health Care Projects in the late Ottoman Empire: Civilization, Hygiene, and Salvation, Sylvia Önder, PhD
  

9:45–10:15 a.m. Discussion: Flood, Coulehan, Bressler, Garden and Önder

10:15 – 10:30 a.m. Morning break – Mitchell Hall

10:30 – 11:30 a.m. Concurrent sessions

1. Cholera and Its Representations – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Steven J. Peitzman, MD

• Cholera, Commerce, and Contagion: Rediscovering Dr. Beck’s Report, Ashleigh R.Tuite, MHSc(c) and David N. Fisman, MD
• The Epidemic Behind the Veil: Cholera in Fiction, Film and History, Agnes A. Cardoni, PhD; Molly Bridger; Angel Fuller; and Casey Kelly
  

2. Impact of Illness and Disabilty – Gross Library
Moderator: Jennifer Patterson, DO(c)

• Home Sweet Home: The Impact of Poliomyelitis on the American Family, Richard J. Altenbaugh, PhD
• Casualties of the Spirit: The Transatlantic Origins of Post Traumatic Neuroses, Susan Epting, PhD(c)
• Turning a Blind Eye to the Rehabilitation Act: Meaningful Access and the Dollar Bill, Kenji Saito, MD/JD 2010(c)

3. The Medical Environment – Koop Room
Moderator: Todd Vladyka, DO

• The Anemic Narrative: Will the electronic health record reduce the patient narrative to a footnote?, Valerie Satkoske, MSW, PhD
• Gender Roles and the Changing Face of Medicine, Nina Singh, MD and Gabrielle Jones, PhD
• The Changing Public Image of the American Catholic Hospital, 1925 – Present, Barbra Mann Wall, PhD

11:45 a.m. – Concurrent sessions

12:45 p.m.

4. Exploring the Text – Koop Room
Moderator: Jack Truten, PhD

• Was Sherlock Holmes a Quack? Or, Why Arthur Conan Doyle’s Medical Stories Matter, Sylvia A. Pamboukian, PhD
• Reaching Back Through Time: Constructing Genealogies of the Not-Neurotypical in Illness, Narratives, Elizabeth A. Dolan, PhD
• Pathographies: Teaching Illness, Creating Theory, Karol Weaver, PhD and
• A Recovery Narrative, Jenny Traig’s Devils in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood, Sara Kern

5. Alternative Dimensions in Health Care – Gross Library
Moderator: Steven Rosenzweig, MD

• Cacao: From Ethnobotany to Translational Medicine, William J. Hurst, PhD
• Just Language: The Key to Bridging the Gap Between Physicians and Patients, Kathryn M. Ross, MBE, DMH(c)
• Historical Perspectives on Compensation in Human Subjects Research, Ilene Albala, JD/MBE(c)

6. On Stage and Screen – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Joe Vander Veer, Jr., MD

• Dramatizing the Local History of Medicine: An Early 21st Century Perspective on the Yellow Fever Epidemic of the Late 19th Century, Robert J. Bonk, PhD
• Television’s Images of Health Practitioners and/or Health Care Institutions Through the Ages, Rosemary Mazanet, MD, PhD and Joseph Turow, PhD

12:45 – 1:45 p.m. Lunch with Performance – Mitchell Hall
My doc’s better than your doc: Medical advertising’s rinse and spin and the lost voice of Arthur Godfrey, Richard Donze, DO, MPH

2:00 - 3:00 p.m. Concurrent sessions

7. Narratives of Illness, Aging and Grief – Koop Room
Moderator: Kimberly Myers, PhD

• Listening to the Stories of Patients, David Biro, MD, PhD
• MY FATHER’S HEART: A Son’s Reckoning With the Legacy of Heart Disease, Steve McKee
• Imagining Death: Contemporary Grief Narratives, Kate Dean-Haidet, RN, MSN, MA, PhD(c)

8. The “Art” of Anatomy and Other Collections – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Jan Goplerud, MD

• Joseph Maclise and the Anatomical Arts Tradition, Rebecca E. May, PhD
• The Exquisite Cadaver and the Evolution of the Anatomic Theater, Sherrilyn M. Sethi, MMH(c), DMH(c)
• Constituting the Syphilitic Collector, Elizabeth Lee, PhD

3:15 – 4:15 p.m. Closing Panel – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Rhonda L. Soricelli, MD
The Virtual and the Real: Medical History at the 21st Century Mutter Museum, Robert Hicks, PhD; Anna Dhody, MA and Karie Youngdahl, BA

4:20 – 5:00 p.m. Wrap-up; future plans for consortium

Program Committee: Andrew Berns, PhD(c), David H. Flood, PhD, Jan Goplerud, MD, Steven J. Peitzman, MD, Rhonda L. Soricelli, MD (Chair), Joseph Vander Veer, Jr., MD and Todd Vladyka, DO.

This meeting is made possible through the generous support of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia’s Francis C. Wood Institute for the History of Medicine and Sections on Medicine and the Arts and Medical History and Drexel University’s College of Nursing & Health Professions and College of Medicine with additional support from the Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania

To register, please send an email to RLSoricelli@comcast.net no later than MAY14th midnight. Registration is mandatory for the symposium.

Image above, "Head and skull of malformed infants; conjoined twins, bilateral cleft lip and holoprosencephaly" from Joseph Maclise's book Surgical Anatomy, published in London in 1856. Click on image to see much larger version; Found on the N-66 Blog.

Original Fritz Kahn Posters and Key Booklet, Sotheby's Vintage Posters Auction, May 13

Morbid Anatomy reader Gotthold is a long time collector of Fritz Kahn books and posters. He is currently selling two of his original posters (as pictured above) along with a "key booklet" as part of Sotheby's May 13 Vintage Posters Auction.

I asked Gotthold to tell me and the Morbid Anatomy readership a bit about this special collection he is actioning off in the hopes of helping it find a proper and loving home; here is his response:

Dear Morbid Anatomy readers:

I have been a keen reader of this blog since I discovered it about a year ago when searching for information on anatomical posters I bought for use in an art project.

My personal artistic fascination with death, pornography, science and religion has taken me on a strange and fascinating journey over the past year through the cavernous bookshop cellars of Vienna, the seedy sex shops of London’s Soho, and the wonderful Morbid Anatomy blog in search of new materials and ideas. In my search for materials to use for my work, I spend a seemingly senseless amount of time and money looking for rare, obscure, and interesting materials to use and take inspiration from. It was on one of these escapades when visiting Vienna that I first stumbled upon the wonderful works of Fritz Kahn whose unique mechanical anatomy illustrations have earned much attention on this very blog (recent posts here, here, and here).

Since this initial discovery, I have managed to amass an extensive collection of Fritz Kahn's books, all featuring his wonderful illustrations, and have also had the luck to acquire a few original posters, including the famed ‘Der Mensch als Industriepalast’ or 'Man as Industrial Palace' of 1926 as seen above, top; you can found out more about that piece here.

Conducting more commercially oriented research around these works, I stumbled upon Morbid Anatomy for the first time to read a post on a Christies ‘Anatomy as Art’ auction in New York where this poster sold for some $3,500. The financially conscious side of myself forced me to reluctantly get in touch with Christies in London regarding a sale. I was informed by their experts there was no specialist auction coming up anytime soon but that I could still consign the poster to a ‘Vintage Posters’ auction in May. I chose to sell the two posters and a ‘key’ booklet together as a lot; I still believe this is extremely unique, given that the key booklet acts as an index to the numerical and alphabetical indicators on the poster without which it is difficult to fully comprehend the intended meaning of the illustrations.

The marketing around this auction has been weak, and there isn’t much explanation of the uniqueness of the key booklet or even an image of the second poster in the lot (as seen above, bottom). When I looked at the other posters for sale at this the auction I realized that my item is out of place and I doubt that it will strike the right chord with the bidders.

I have still however decided to proceed with the auction, not in the least because I need the proceeds of this sale to help further my artistic pursuits. I therefore implore anyone who knows relevant collectors to spread the word about the auction, and encourage anyone who’s interested to bid on these items as they are impeccable (the nice thing about Christies auctions is that anyone can place bids from anywhere in the world online). You can see the lot on the auction website by clicking here.

So please, any and all of you medical art aficionados out there, check out (and bid on!) Gotthold's Sotheby's lot on May 13th; you can find out more about the lot by clicking here and more about the auction by clicking here. And yes, online/remote bidding is very much a possibility! Also, please feel free to forward this post to any interested parties!

If you are interested in learning more about Fritz Kahn and seeing more of his incredible work, I highly recommend the beautiful, lavishly illustrated book Fritz Kahn: Man Machine / Maschine Mensch, which comes complete with a frame-worthy poster-sized reproduction of ‘Der Mensch als Industriepalast’ ('Man as Industrial Palace'). Good stuff!

Kabinett des Grotesken ("Cabinet of the Grotesque"), Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité, Spiegel Online

My friend, German journalist Michael Kneissler, just sent me a link to an article and an amazing short film celebrating the world famous Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité on its 300th birthday, prompted by a new exhibition at the museum entitled "Charité--300 years of medicine in Berlin."

Following is an excerpt from the article--found on Spiegel Online and entitled "Kabinett des Grotesken" ("Cabinet of the Grotesque")--via a sloppy Google Translation:

Human malformations, surgical instruments, the Dildo-box of a sex researcher: The Collection of the Berlin Charité shows the dazzling variety of medical research. To mark its 300th anniversary Clinic presents highlights from the world famous now its archive.

Hands upset, steal: impossible. In the showcases the treasures of the Lord Virchow are safe. Very safe. And yet the guards sneak past every now and again. Ready to intervene immediately. They know that the temptation is to press for the issue "Charité - 300 Years of Medicine in Berlin" on the trigger...

Brains, livers, lungs, testes, ovaries removed - from the different and peaceful perished miserably, preserved in jars for viewing, Educate and quenching. An exhibition of the Interior, without taboos. Even human fetuses are also included. One with legs fused together, one with eyes grown together in the middle of the forehead. A Cyclops. Unreal and yet real.

Virchow himself called this collection - eagerly gathered for medical students and the public in order to warn of an unhealthy lifestyle - his "favorite child", for some visitors to the house if these preparations now the favorite image design: "Krass," it escapes some...

This dazzling looking exhibition is on view at the Berlin-based Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité until February 2011; very much hope to see it before it comes down!

You can read the whole article and watch the wonderful video walk-through on the same page (just click the play button!) by clicking here. You can find out more about the museum in English by clicking here. Image above is drawn from the video.

Thanks so much to Michael Kneissler for sending this along!

"Anatomical Art: Dissection to Illustration," Exhibition Curated by Marie Dauenheimer, Arlington, Virginia

"We have the gift of language, the gift of making memories in words and pictures," Aziz says. "The bodies are gone, but by making these memories, we, to an extent, resurrect them. This is the antidote to death."--David Montgomery, "In gross anatomy, Howard U.'s Ashraf Aziz sees nothing but grace," Washington Post, Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Marie Dauenheimer, friend, friend of Morbid Anatomy, and Observatory lecturer past and future (more on that future lecture--which is entitled "Three Unique Medical Museums in Northern Italy" and will take place on Saturday May 1--soon!) has curated an exhibition of artworks inspired by the cadaver as part of a year-long collaboration between Howard's College of Medicine and the Art Institute of Washington. The Washington Post just ran a really lovely and in-depth story about the exhibition and the collaboration; it was such an interesting article that I have posted it here in its entirety:

In gross anatomy, Howard U.'s Ashraf Aziz sees nothing but grace
By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2010

At 71, Ashraf Aziz has spent half his life cutting open cadavers and initiating medical students at Howard University into the pungent mysteries of human anatomy. He likes the heads. Extracting the muscles of chewing is one of his specialties. There is little about the body that can faze him anymore.

And yet, here in a little art gallery across the street from the Rosslyn Metro station, this most eloquent and loquacious man of science has been rendered almost speechless.

"I, I'm really a little bit -- " he stammers.

He sounds like a first-year medical student about to be overcome in the embalming room.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Tears well in his eyes.

Surrounded by red-wine-sipping artists and art students on a recent evening, the anatomist is contemplating their renderings of the human body. The nudes not only have no clothes, they also have no skin. The subjects are cadavers -- cadavers from the lab where Aziz teaches gross anatomy.

"I'm so deeply moved," he says. He never thought he would find such kindred spirits.

This exhibit, "Anatomical Art: Dissection to Illustration," is just one outcome of an unusual year-old collaboration between Howard's College of Medicine and the Art Institute of Washington. The cross-disciplinary ping-pong continues strong in both directions:

There is talk of enlisting animators from the art school to enhance lessons on locomotion at the medical school. An Art Institute sculptor presented Aziz with some fancy modeling clay, which he used to take an impression from the inside of a chimpanzee skull as part of his comparative chew-muscle research.

Meanwhile, at the art school, to such curriculum standards as "life drawing" -- portraits of live, nude models -- has been added the informal option of, well, dead drawing, in the cadaver lab. Some artists have taken to exploring -- and memorizing the Latin names of -- complex muscle groups that invisibly influence the supple motions of the living torso.

Perhaps most striking has been seeing the life and career of one of Washington's singularly passionate scientists come full circle.

The son of amateur artists in the Indian diaspora, growing up in Tanzania, Aziz, too, once wanted to become an artist. But his poet-carpenter father and his henna-painter mother feared there wasn't a secure future in art. So Aziz became a zoologist and a human anatomist, an associate professor at Howard.

The choice was apt, for the study of anatomy has embraced art -- and vice versa -- at least since Leonardo da Vinci performed dissections and drew the results. From "Gray's Anatomy," the seminal 19th-century illustrated text, to latter-day sensational exhibitions of plasticized cadavers such as "Bodies" and "Body Worlds," the dissected corpse continues to fascinate, repulse, instruct and inspire.

Aziz believes that when science and art diverge, both lose. He draws his own illustrations. To conclude his regular medical lecture on the hand and forearm, he has had traditional Indian tabla drummers demonstrate the dexterity of the muscles and tendons that his students will tweeze in the cadaver lab. In 1999 he co-wrote a 19-page academic journal article in which he cited Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Marshall McLuhan, along with medical authorities. The ostensible subject was to defend the relevance of the "real" cadaver in medical education despite the rise of digital "cyber cadavers" -- but really the piece was a stirring meditation on authenticity. Away from the lab he reads poetry and writes essays on popular Indian cinema.

Aziz's dream has been to see what a new generation of artists would bring to a new generation of cadavers. Even if the results were nothing revolutionary, he thought, the process itself would be illuminating for all involved: Where life has ended, insight might begin.

Anatomy for art students
As Aziz was casting his thoughts from the realm of science to art, an artist named Marie Dauenheimer was thinking in the other direction.

In 1979, five years after Aziz began teaching at Howard, Dauenheimer was sitting in a class, Gross Anatomy for Artists, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. What a concept, she thought: The students would spend a couple of hours in a studio life drawing, then cross the hall to the anatomy lab. They would shuttle back and forth from living to dead, surface to structure, skin-deep to skinless.

"That was a turning point for me," she says.

She got a master's in medical illustration at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she took gross anatomy and dissected a cadaver. "I loved every minute of it," she says. "To explore the human body and then being able to draw it."

She built a career as a freelance illustrator -- drawing surgical procedures, molecular structures, physiological processes. Four years ago she joined the faculty of the Art Institute, teaching classes in life drawing and human and animal anatomy.

Last year she conceived a summer sabbatical to realize one of her own dreams. She wanted to conjure those epiphanic student days in the anatomy lab. She proposed to develop a more powerful way to teach principles of anatomy to art students.

One of the best friends and collaborators of her husband, anthropologist Samuel Strong Dunlap, was none other than Aziz. Dauenheimer paid a visit to Howard. She expected just to have coffee with Aziz, and brainstorm how they might work together. Aziz surprised her.

"Your cadaver is waiting for you," he said.

He encouraged Dauenheimer to do the dissection herself, with help from Dunlap. All summer she cut and drew, inviting art students and colleagues to make their own sketches and sculptures. That work is in the exhibit.

The anatomist imposed one condition on the artist.

"He had dibs on the head," Dauenheimer says.

The source
Dissection puts Aziz in a philosophical mood. In the lab one recent afternoon, he grasps the left hand of a cadaver and holds it up for inspection. The flexible assemblage of bones, muscles and tendons rests in his rubber-gloved palm.

"Look at this here," he says, manipulating the sinewy thumb. "What Aristotle called the organ of organs, the opposing thumb."

His rubber fingers glide down the flayed forearm, and he lightly presses and pulls stringy cords that cause the thumb and fingers to move, puppetlike.

"The body is organized in layers of muscles," he says. "Look at the silvery tone of the tendons! Beauty is not skin-deep, it is deep-deep. . . . The cadaver opens itself up to reflection. This is where data and information lead to knowledge and insight."

Aziz is standing in the center of a vast space filled with 46 stainless steel platforms, each supporting a cadaver in a blue or white body bag and connected to black ventilation tubes.

The atmosphere is not morbid, but reverent. The bodies have been donated by the families of the dead. For six months, students work with the cadavers. Then the remains are cremated and returned to the families, or interred in a plot in Beltsville. No personal details about the cadavers are revealed to the students. The cadaver that Dauenheimer dissected and that most of the artists drew belonged to a 94-year-old woman.

Before dissection, the bodies are embalmed in a room next to the lab. The blood is drained out and preservative chemicals are pumped in. During dissection, the skin is peeled back and fat and other tissue is cleared away to reveal the purple-brown muscles and iridescent tendons.

In Aziz's view, the anatomy lab is not the end of anything, it is the beginning of something.

"The cadaver is a medical student's first patient," he says.

It is like a message from the physician who signed the death certificate to a new generation of doctors. "The novice begins training where the trained physician leaves off," he wrote in his manifesto celebrating the cadaver.

A cadaver is unwieldy. It will not fit in your laptop for later reference. Hence the need to depict and describe it -- the artist's role.

Yet Aziz stakes his worldview on this point: Just as the medical student must begin his initiation with the original flesh and guts, not with a pristine digitized reflection, so the artist -- engaged in creating yet another reflection -- must begin at the source.

Moment of insight
Pen and sketchbook in hand, Geoffrey Moore was paying close attention to the skinned and stripped lower leg and foot of the cadaver. He noticed that one of the toenails was still tinted with polish. Fuchsia. A sudden powerful consciousness of this departed life flooded his imagination.

"I had to stop drawing for a minute," recalls Moore, 21, a third-year animation student.

Then he went back to work. He was trying to solve an artistic problem. In his animation exercises at the institute, he had been having trouble with the "toe-roll" or "foot-roll" motion, when an animated character is taking strides. Now in the lab he was drawing -- and mentally absorbing -- those muscles and tendons that make that roll possible.

"We're all kind of differently shaped, but motion is universal," Moore says. He was accustomed to rendering the surfaces of things, where appearances vary so much. The cadaver lab reveals the universal in the particular. "Instead of seeing the differences, you see the similarities in our bodies," he says. "The more you learn about what's under the skin, the more you can apply that when you see someone walking down the street."

Moore's sketches of the leg and foot hang in the exhibit organized by Dauenheimer, along with the work of eight other students and professional artists.

At the exhibit opening, having recovered his composure, Aziz walks from picture to picture, pausing delightedly at each. Courtly and cheerful, he wears a sports coat and a striped tie with little skulls on it. He is joined by his wife, Barbara Dunn, an oncologist with the National Cancer Institute. They live in Mount Pleasant.

"This is fantastic," Aziz says to Charl Ann Brew, who has made an eight-inch sculpture of a gesturing cadaver whose bones and muscles are revealed to different degrees on different limbs. Aziz lingers over the head.

"You have the forehead muscle . . . the smile muscle . . . then the kissing muscle right there . . . and in order to give a French kiss, the muscle there to get deep suction. Exquisite detail!"

Brew, an art instructor, says the project has inspired her to look deeper. "I'm memorizing a different sent of muscles every quarter."

As he walks through the exhibit, Aziz cites a few lines by the Urdu poet Ghalib, about how the awareness of death adds intensity to life: "If the candle did not immolate itself in all its brilliant colors, the night would not be illuminated."

These are his most important anatomy lessons.

"We have the gift of language, the gift of making memories in words and pictures," Aziz says. "The bodies are gone, but by making these memories, we, to an extent, resurrect them. This is the antidote to death."

The exhibition--which looks not-to-be-missed--will be on view until May 8th at the Art Institute of Washington Gallery (“Gallery 1820”), 1820 N. Fort Myer Drive, Street Level, Arlington, Virginia. You can read the entire article in context on the Washington Post website by clicking here. You can see the photo gallery--from which the above image was drawn--by clicking here. You can find out more about the show by clicking here.

Image: Nikki Kahn-The Washington Post; Caption reads: "The son of amateur artists in the Indian Diaspora and growing up in Tanzania, Aziz, too, once wanted to become an artist. But his poet-carpenter father and his henna-painter mother feared there wasn't a secure future in art. So he became a zoologist and a human anatomist, and is now an associate professor at Howard. Here, Aziz spritzes a solution on a cadaver to keep it moist at the gross anatomy lab in Northwest Washington." You can see the full photo essay by clicking here.

"The True and Horrid Story of Burke and Hare," Illustrated Lecture by Lisa Rosner, Observatory, Thursday March 18th

This Thursday we have a really exciting lecture at Observatory: Professor and scholar Lisa Rosner will be on hand to tell us the "true and spectacular history" of Williams Burke and Hare, perpetrators, in the name of medicine, of "the most atrocious murder spree of the century, outflanking even Jack the Ripper's," as detailed in her book The Anatomy Murders.

As she explains in an interview on the Dead Guys in Suits blog:

Between November 1827 and November 1828, in Edinburgh, Scotland, William Burke and William Hare killed 16 people – 3 men, 12 women, and 1 child – in order to sell their cadavers to an anatomy lecturer, Dr. Robert Knox. These were the first serial killings to gain media attention, 60 years before Jack the Ripper. The link between murder-for-profit and medical progress has fascinated people ever since. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a short story based on it, called The Body Snatcher, which was turned into a terrific horror flick in 1945, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi..

Hear the entire story, get a tutorial on the eponymous practice of "burking," and purchase signed copies of her book the day after tomorrow at Observatory! Full details follow; very much hope to see you there!

The True and Horrid Story of Burke and Hare
An illustrated lecture and book signing by Lisa Rosner,
Professor of History at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.
Date: Thursday, March 18th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5

Up the close and down the stair,
But and Ben with Burke and Hare.
Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief,
Knox the man who buys the beef.
—anonymous street song

On March 18, 2010, Lisa Rosner will be discussing the myths and realities of the Burke and Hare case, resurrected in her recent book The Anatomy Murders: Being the True and Spectacular History of Edinburgh's Notorious Burke and Hare and of the Man of Science Who Abetted Them in the Commission of Their Most Heinous Crimes.

On Halloween night 1828, in the West Port district, a woman sometimes known as Madgy Docherty was last seen in the company of William Burke and William Hare. Days later, police discovered her remains in the surgery of the prominent anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. Docherty was the final victim of the most atrocious murder spree of the century, outflanking even Jack the Ripper's. Together with their accomplices, Burke and Hare were accused of killing sixteen people over the course of twelve months in order to sell their corpses as "subjects" for dissection. The ensuing criminal investigation raised troubling questions about the common practices by which medical men obtained cadavers, the lives of the poor in Edinburgh's back alleys, and the ability of the police to protect the public from cold-blooded murder.

Lisa Rosner is Professor of History at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. She received her AB from Princeton University and her PhD from Johns Hopkins University. She has been awarded fellowships from the American Philosophical Society, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and the New Jersey Historical Commission. The Anatomy Murders is the third book in her historical trilogy on Edinburgh medicine. "The Worlds of Burke and Hare," the companion website to The Anatomy Murders, is available at Burke and Hare. You can find out more about her book by clicking here. You can find out more about her work by clicking here.

You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here. You can read Lisa Rosner's entire interview on the Dead Guys in Suits blog by clicking here. To find out more about her book The Anatomy Murders, click here.

Image used by permission of the Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

"An Iconography of Contagion," Web Exhibition, National Library of Medicine

About a hundred years ago, public health took a visual turn. In an era of devastating epidemic and endemic infectious disease, health professionals began to organize coordinated campaigns that sought to mobilize public action through eye-catching wall posters, illustrated pamphlets, motion pictures, and glass slide projections...

Check out the National Library of Medicine's wonderful new web exhibition "An Iconography of Contagion"--which explores the relationship between posters and public health, and from which all of the above text and images were drawn--by clicking here. Curated by Friend-of-Morbid-Anatomy Michael Sappol, this is a characteristically smart, thoughtful, and visually rich exhibition.

You can see the entire exhibition, and read the full text and full image captions, by clicking here. You can see many more wonderful images in the gallery section by clicking here. Click on images above to see much larger, richer versions.

Image Credits:

1. She may be…a bag of TROUBLE. Syphilis – Gonorrhea., U.S. Public Health Service, United States, 1940s. Photomechanical print: color; 41 x 51 cm. Artist: “Christian.”
2. Ali si zdrav? (Are you healthy?), Golnik, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, 1950s. Photomechanical print: color; 42 x 60 cm.
3. Tuberkulose undersøgelse – en borgerpligt (Tuberculosis examination – a citizen’s duty.), Copenhagen, Denmark, 1947. Color lithograph; 62 x 85 cm. Designer/artist: : Henry Thelander (fl. 1902-1986). Lithographers: Andreasen & Lachmann.
4. Tuberculosis bacilli. Chinese Anti-Tuberculosis Association, Shanghai, 1953.
5. La course a la mort. (The race with death.) Ligue Nationale Française contre le Peril Vénérién, France, ca. 1926. Color lithograph; reproduction of a pastel drawing; 69 x 88 cm. Artist: Charles Emmanuel Jodelet (1883-1969).

Upcoming Antiquarian Medical Book Auction, Bloomsbury Auctions, March 10th

A lovely collection of antiquarian anatomical and medical books--specified as being "The Property of a Gentleman"--will be taking place on Wednesday, March 10th at Bloomsbury Auctions, London. Online bidding will also be available for those of us who, sadly, live far from London town.

To find out more, and see a complete list of lots, click here. To download a PDF of the catalog--from which the above images are drawn!--click here and then select "download pdf."

National Library of Medicine's History of Medicine Syllabus Archive

I just discovered that in addition to their wonderful web exhibitions and online image collection, the National Library of Medicine also has an online archive of history of medicine syllabi, which it touts as "the world's largest." The collection can be browsed by professor, title, institution, or subject and looks, after a quick perusal, to be pretty rich. A great resource for anyone--like myself--interested in teaching themselves more about the history of medicine without going to grad school.

Click here to explore the syllabi collection for yourself. Found via Somatosphere.

Image: "The human body and the library as sources of knowledge", frontispiece of Tabulae Anatomicae, Early 18th cent., Johann Adam Kulmus; found via the National Library of Medicine's "Images from the History of Medicine;" Larger version found on Bibliodyssey's Flickr set.

My New Favorite Magazine : Lapham's Quarterly

To the pain in the womb. O womb, womb, womb, womb. Boxy womb, red womb, white womb, fleshy womb, bloody womb, large womb, bloated womb--demonic womb.
--From a prayer for curing hysteria, C. 950 , Europe. Lapham’s Quarterly Medicine Issue, p. 175

At a recent open studio event, I met an editor for a magazine I had never heard of: Lapham's Quarterly. Interestingly, the current issue's theme was medicine, and the editor promised to send me a copy to check out. What I received has fast become my new favorite magazine.

A kind of Cabinet Magazine for the history set, this digest-sized, beautifully illustrated tome is a delightful, intriguing and thought-provoking read. Each issue utilizes a sort of patchwork, magpie approach to the theme; contents include historical pieces (see epigraph above), artworks, quotations, and contemporary writings that approach the topic obliquely and with a restrained, urbane wit, resulting in an impressionistic, playful, suggestive portrait of the topic. Former issues of the magazine--described by founder Lewis H. Lapham (formerly of Harper’s Magazine) as a magazine for “people who wished they had paid more attention in school” (1)--have tackled themes such as Eros, Crimes and Punishment, and Book of Nature; the next issue will be Religion.

The Medicine Issue will be on the newsstand until December 15th. I highly recommend you pick up a copy before it disappears. Truly not to be missed!

You can find out more about the Lapham's Quarterly Medicine Issue--and read some of the pieces, including Lewis Lapham's brilliant introduction--by clicking here. You can find out more about the magazine in general by clicking here. Visit the magazine's blog by clicking here. Read more about the magazine in this recent New York Times story, from which the quotation above is drawn.

Image: From the revelatory Wellcome Images. Credit: Position of the right hip. Figure showing child being turned in the womb. Engraving; From: Nouvelles demonstrations d'accouchemens, By: Jacques Pierre Maygrier; Published: BechetParis 1822; Credit: Wellcome Library, London

"From Pastels to PDA's: Medical Education from Pennsylvania Hospital's medical library the 18th C. to the 21st C." Exhibition, Philadelphia

I just learned of a very exciting art/medicine exhibition opening on December 1st at the Pennsylvania Hospital's medical library in Philadelphia, PA. The show, entitled "From Pastels to PDA's: Medical Education from the 18th C. to the 21st C.," will features 16 original Jan Van Rymsdyk anatomical drawings that reside in the permanent collection of their historic collection but are almost never shown, due to their extremely fragile nature. These exquisite crayon drawings were created in the late 18th Century, and their provenance traces back to the personal collection of Benjamin Franklin, who founded Pennsylvania Hospital in 1751. The artist Jan Van Rymsdyk is best known for his sensitive and ground-breaking illustrations 18th Century surgeon William Hunter's Anatomia uteri humani gravidi, or The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus; you can see the best known of those illustrations by clicking here.

The exhibition will be on view until January 2010. This show looks seriously not-to-be-missed.

Here is the full description of the exhibition, from the library website:

From Pastels to PDA's: Medical Education from the 18th c. to the 21st c. exhibits our collection of sixteen Jan Van Rymsdyk anatomical drawings for the first time together in one display. Opening to the public on December 1, 2009, this exhibition is sure to engage visitors interested in the history of medicine.

Long before the use of the X-ray, CAT scan, ultrasound and digital technology, the use of images played an important role in the medical education of students. Anatomical illustrations were cutting edge in the eighteenth century, and Jan Van Rymsdyk was known as one of the best anatomical illustrators in the world. Van Rymsdyk has kept his stature over the past two and a half centuries.

These illustrations were created with crayon making them very susceptible to damage, however, they survived a trip across the ocean in 1762 to become a center of the medical education young men received. In a letter dated April 7, 1762, Fothergill stated, “I need not tell thee that the knowledge of anatomy is of exceeding great use to Practionors in Physic and Surgery & that the means of procuring Subjects with you are not easy.” Medical education was about to change forever in Philadelphia.

Fothergill further offered his opinion that the drawings “not to be seen by every Person but with the Permission of a Trustee & for some small Gratuity for the Benefitt of the House.” Heeding Dr. Fothergill's warning, the drawings were viewed on a limited basis and carefully housed to protect them. Today, as 247 years ago, the drawings are viewed on a limited basis making this exhibit a rare treat for the public. The exhibition will run until December 2010.

For more information please call 215-829-5434.

You can find out more about the exhibition, and how to visit it, by clicking here. You can read more about the show--and much more about the history of the collection--by clicking here.

All images from the Museum Website; Captions: Top: Jan van Rymsdyk (fl. 1750-1788) created the oil drawing shown here, which is part of the Pennsylvania Hospital Historic Collections.; Bottom: Jan van Rymsdyk (fl. 1750-1788) was the primary illustrator for William Hunter's noted work, Anatomia uteri humani gravidi, or The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus. The oil drawing shown here is part of the Pennsylvania Hospital Historic Collections.