Corpse Theatre in the Sacred Spaces of Italy: Guest Post by Elizabeth Harper, All The Saints You Should Know Blog

Elizabeth Harper of the fabulous All the Saints You Should Know blog has some astounding details to add to the material covered in our recent post on Sacred Italian Waxworks or The Last Judgement with Real Corpses in 18th and 19th Century Italy. She kindly agreed to write the following guest post which expands on the idea in surprising ways.

All image credits listed below. Please click on images to see larger, more detailed version!

Corpse Theatre, by Elizabeth Harper

There’s a building that’s hard to overlook on via Giulia in Rome. It’s the one with laughing skulls over the door. 

On a marble plaque at eye level, a winged skeleton holds a spent hourglass over a fresh cadaver. The plaque reads “Alms to the poor dead, which they get in the countryside.”

  “They” is La Confraternita dell'Orazione e Morte, or the Confraternity of Prayer and Death. They were a group of Catholic laymen who buried Rome’s indigent dead and this building was their oratory.

Burying the dead is a particularly important Catholic ritual because burial is linked to the concept of purgatory. Purgatory is a place where heaven-bound souls undergo a final purification before entering heaven, but in Catholic imagery it can easily be mistaken for hell. Fire surrounds writhing nude bodies. This fire is supposed to cleanse the souls just like the grave eventually cleanses bones of rotting flesh. Appropriate, since sin and flesh are often inextricable, like in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians where he calls everything from drunkenness to sorcery a “sin of the flesh”. After purgatory, when sin and flesh are gone for good, the clean, white bones are considered at peace and safely in heaven, which is why skeletons like the one on the façade are often shown with wings. But conversely, no burial means no peace. Though it’s not entirely orthodox, folk traditions imply that the dead can find themselves stuck in a netherworld between this world and the afterlife if they’re not given a Catholic burial.

Migrant workers in the farms outside of Rome were particularly susceptible to this fate. Malaria could kill them in the midst of their work and without family or friends to tend to them, weather and animals could ravage their corpse. The brothers in the Confraternity of Prayer and Death made the trip out to the countryside by foot and gathered these bodies year-round. It could take them four days to carry the dead back to Rome on their stretcher. They did this from 1552 to 1896. Their handwritten ledgers indicate that they picked up at least 8,600 bodies during those 344 years. If they passed a parish churchyard they would bury the workers there, but if not, they would carry them back to their oratory on via Giulia.

Today, the nuns who use the oratory open it for just a few hours every week while they pray for souls in purgatory. If you happen to find the church open, a donation to the sisters yields access to the crypt where you can see the lifetimes of work done by the brothers before them. Down there, you’re likely to be alone. The erratic hours mean that unlike Rome’s famous Capuchin crypt, there’s no line of nervously giggling tourists. It’s just you, the bone chandeliers, the engraved skulls, an altar full of legs and arms, and somewhat ominously, a scythe.

The overall effect is a bit ramshackle because we’re only seeing salvaged pieces of the original crypt. When the Tiber embankments were added in the late 19th century, the majority of the crypt and the order’s cemetery were destroyed. Including, unfortunately, the crypt’s theatre.

The scythe is actually nothing more than a theatrical prop, but somehow that’s even more unnerving than the real thing.

Here are a few images of how it once looked:
  In 1763 the confraternity built a stage in their crypt. They started using the corpses they collected in tableaux staged for the public called sacred representations. If you’ve ever seen one of those Christmas manger scenes where a real Baby Jesus is depicted more or less in a petting zoo, you’ve seen a sacred representation. The only difference was the confraternity was using dead people, not farm animals. 

They staged a sacred representation every year for the week following All Souls Day. It started simply with “The Burial of Jacob”. A few flat paintings were used as scenery and a corpse played Jacob’s corpse. Specific death scenes were always popular, The death of Judith, Jezebel, and St. Paul were all staged along with a few more universal tableaux, like “the allegory that we all must die”.

Every year the productions became more elaborate. By 1790 they had life-sized wax figures playing the roles of the living, dressed in costumes designed for the occasion.  In 1802 when they staged “The Mountain of Purgatory” they built a mountain surrounded by candelabra. The figure of Justice was perched up high holding scales and a sword. Beneath him you could see souls in the flames of purgatory. One lucky soul was shown being lifted by a cherub and taken up to heaven. When staged with actual dead people, it’s hard to make a scene like this any more literal. The sacred representations were seen as a useful teaching tool that transcended language and literacy barriers.

Other churches in Rome like Santa Maria in Trastevere and the now deconsecrated cemetery chapel of the Lateran put on similar, though less elaborate tableaux. But another place that rivaled the Baroque stagecraft of Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte was the hospital just across the Tiber—Santo Spirito.

If you visit Santo Spirito today, you won’t find a trace of the sacred representations, but there are eyewitness accounts and engravings of the shows that were performed in their graveyard starting in 1813. The confraternity there cared for the dead from the hospital and like the brothers at Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte, they had access to a large number of unknown or unclaimed bodies. In the days before the medicalization of death, dying at home was considered preferable and a hospital death was often a last resort for people who were poor and alone.

After sunset, theses brothers would come collect the dead from the hospital and carry them out to the cemetery. There, they would open one of the hospital’s 24 mass graves and lower in the naked body with chains. The bodies would stay there, unless they were cast in a sacred representation. A particularly noteworthy performance in 1831 depicted the final judgment. The mass graves were opened and the freshest corpses were costumed and propped up beneath a wax angel blowing the last trumpet. Fortunately, Antoine Jean-Baptiste Thomas left us with an engraving of this particular dramatization.

Starting in the early 19th century, Rome’s confraternities started to get some pushback from the pope on their use of bone and corpses. The final nail in the proverbial coffin of corpse theatre was hammered in when Rome joined unified Italy in 1870. A strict ban on burying people in convents, crypts or hospitals was enforced for the sake of public health. One of the last sacred representations was done at Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte in 1880. The brothers there preformed the “Vision of Ezekiel” in secret knowing their cemetery and their performances were about to become a thing of the past. In the end, their customs were as ephemeral as human flesh. 

More on this topic can be found at the recent post Sacred Italian Waxworks or The Last Judgement with Real Corpses, 18th and 19th Century Italy by clicking here.

Image List

1.  Insignia, or stemma, of the Confraternita dell'Orazione e Morte
2. "Chapelle de l'Eglise de la Mort" Engraved by Francois Alexandre Villain after Jean-Baptiste Thomas, Wellcome Images
3-8. Photographs by Elizabeth Harper
9-13. Images of Orazione e Morte on via Giulia ; Photographs from the Archives from the Roman Society of Natural History
14. "Dramatisation of Purgatory" at Santo Spirito; Engraved by Francois Alexandre Villain after Jean-Baptiste Thomas

SOURCES: Amadei, Emma. "Il Culto Dei Morti Nella Roma Dell'Ottocento." Archivio Storico Capitolino. 1 Jan. 1957. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.
L'Arciconfraternita Di S. Maria Dell'Orazione E Morte in Roma E Le Sue Rappresentazioni Sacre. Vol. 33. Rome: Roma, 1910. Print.

New Conference Devoted to 19th Century Eccentric, Naturalist, Traveler and Taxidermist Charles Waterton, July 31 - August 1, West Yorkshire, England

Following is information about a new conference devoted to 19th century eccentric traveler, writer, naturalist and taxidermist Charles Waterton featuring friend of Morbid Anatomy Pat Morris. The conference will take place on July 31 and August 1. Full details follow. You can find out more here. Thanks to Petra Lange Berndt for bringing this to our attention!

An Unconquerable Aversion to Piccadilly: Charles Waterton, Traveler, Taxidermist and Pioneer Conservationist
Society for the History of Natural History conference and AGM
Wakefield, West Yorkshire, Friday 31st July and Saturday 1 August 2015 

The Annual General Meeting of the Society for the History of Natural History will be held in association with a one day conference of talks celebrating the life and work of Charles Waterton (1782-1865) and a second day with related excursions around Wakefield in West Yorkshire.

The Wakefield Museum, at Wakefield One, is currently hosting an exhibition “The extraordinary world of Charles Waterton” and the Society’s meeting will take place at a venue within easy reach of the Museum and will include a visit to the exhibition.
Please download the registration form: Registration form Waterton in Wakefield
Outline Programme

This two-day conference celebrating the life and work of Charles Waterton (1782-1865) will comprise a day of talks on aspects of the life and work of Charles Waterton, the SHNH AGM, and a visit to The Wakefield Museum at Wakefield One to view the exhibition “The extraordinary world of Charles Waterton”. Pat Morris will give a demonstration at Wakefield One on “The inside story” showing how Waterton achieved his results.

Speakers include:

• Jan Graffius, curator at Stonyhurst College, on Waterton’s education and Catholic upbringing;
• Pat Morris on the taxidermy;
• John Whitaker on Waterton’s Wakefield connections;
• Adrian Padfield on the Curare story, and
• John Chalmers on the disagreements between Audubon and Waterton.
• Richard Milner on ‘eccentric naturalists’

This will be followed on the Saturday with a guided walk with David Mee following part of the Waterton trail, taking participants around the former Waterton Estate at Walton Hall, including Waterton’s grave. The meeting place is the Anglers Park Visitor Centre, accessible using local bus services and also has parking.

Please contact the meetings secretary, Gina Douglas, at meetings@shnh.org.uk for more information, or if you would like to be one of the speakers or have an active participation in the event. 

Venue Details

• The meeting venue is the Unity Works and that is at Westgate, Wakefield, WF1 1EP. 
• The Museum address and postcode is: Wakefield One, Burton Street,Wakefield,WF1 2DD. 
• Anglers Country Park, Haw Park Lane, Wintereett, Wakefield WF4 2EB. 

Why “Waterton in Wakefield”?
“Why Wakefield?” seems to be something I get asked when I tell people about the meeting on Charles Waterton. The answer is that he lived close by, in Walton Hall, now a luxury hotel and popular wedding venue.

But the other reason is that Wakefield One, the local museum, currently has on display some of the remarkable taxidermy that Waterton created in the “The extraordinary world of Charles Waterton.”

Those attending the meeting will be able to see that display and also see a demonstration of just how Waterton managed to achieve some of his results: he managed to create hollow taxidermy specimens, with no supports inside.

The conference venue is the Unity Works in Westgate, a converted building, with lifts to the 3rd floor, where we will meet, and short walk from Wakefield Westgate station. There is a free shuttle bus from that station, stopping at Wakefield One, also nearby, the town centre and bus station, and completing the circuit via Wakefield Kirkgate station and the Hepworth museum, as well as many retail outlet shops.

There should be ample parking adjacent to The Unity Works and near the station. The conference dinner will also be held nearby.

On Saturday there will be an opportunity to walk around the Walton hall estate, guided by the Park Ranger and starting from the Waterton Discovery centre at Angler’s Country Park. That has parking and is a kilometre from a bus stop with a service from Wakefield.

The walk will include a visit to Waterton’s grave and the “watch towers” or early “hides” used to protect the wildlife on his estate and stop poaching, part of Waterton’s pioneer work as a conservationist. There is a podcast available which describes part of the walk: go to http://www.wakefield.gov.uk/residents/sport-and-leisure/outdoors/parks-and-countryside/parks/podcasts/waterton-trail- Gina Douglas 

Charles Waterton
Enter ‘Charles Waterton’ as a search item in Google and you get 400,000 hits, evidence of widespread fame and an intriguing life. He was a traveller, ‘larger than life’ person and an inventive taxidermist, now regarded as one of Britain’s great eccentrics. Few of his contemporaries engaged in such a variety of mischief and adventure. His activities, and the aggravation he caused, continue to fascinate, inspire and amuse even 150 years after his death.

Waterton’s famous book Wanderings in South America, published in 1825, described his travels at a time when few people made such journeys. It was re-published many times, exciting acclaim, argument and derision in equal volume. It featured a mischievous taxidermy fabrication (The Nondescript), a new species of mammal or a tiny human; Waterton wouldn’t say. Instead he confided to his physician “I do enjoy a bit of stuffing” and went on to create a collection of weird creatures as well as ‘normal’ specimens.
Taxidermy was his passion. His book devoted 19 pages to his special methods, one of the first detailed instructions in this art to be published in Britain. It was followed by many essays on the subject, rudely dismissive of contemporary taxidermists. He used his skill to fabricate imaginary creatures, forming three-dimensional religious and political cartoons that lampooned issues and people that attracted his ire. His surviving specimens offer a fascinating insight into the skill and ideas of a controversial and idiosyncratic nineteenth century naturalist.

Images (Top to bottom):

1. Charles Waterton, by Charles Willson Peale, oil on canvas, 1824; The National Gallery, London
2. "Nondescript" by Waterton, 19th century. Fashioned from the skin of a howler monkey Waterton sometimes pretended this was a new species of animal he had discovered or a caricature of a customs officer who had charged him import duty on the animal skins. Sourced here.
3. “It was the first and last time I was ever on a Cayman’s back.” Charles Waterton. Coloured etching by R. Cruikshank, 1827, after E. Jones

Sacred Italian Waxworks or The Last Judgement with Real Corpses, 18th and 19th Century Italy

Doing research for my upcoming book on the Anatomical Venus, I came across the following choice tidbit in the excellent Waxing Eloquent: Italian Portraits in Wax (on which more here).

Italy, it explains, never developed a tradition of wax museums as we think of them; instead, it enjoyed a flowering of often macabre sacred waxworks located in confraternities devoted to caring for the dead. It continues:

Despite Italy’s lack of wax museums,the country can claim a pre-eminent role ... of transferring the profane popular amusements of such displays to pious representations that, for more than a century, attracted the devout and curious alike. They were set up by the various confraternities devoted to burying the poor and bodies that had been abandoned in the countryside… The oldest was the archconfraternity of Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte… to enhance the solemnity of the octave of the dead in November, the association prepared musical oratorios, artistic biers and sacred representations. The latter were staged in the cemetery under the church, which, in 1762, the provveditore Agostino Ancidoni had decorated entirely with skulls and bones “artistically' arranged to create a lugubrious mise-en-scène. It was also at this time that the representations began to be staged…”

 ... an even more macabre representation was prepared in 1813 when, in the atrium of cemetery of Santo Spirito in Sassia, the scene of the Last Judgment was staged in a singular manner. Set at the feet of a wax angel sounding the trumpet to rouse the dead and call them to the Last Judgment, at the end of the pits were the real corpses of those who had died the previous night at the adjacent hospital. 

You can read more in Waxing Eloquent: Italian Portraits in Wax, edited by Andrea Daninos; find out more--or buy a copy!--here.

Image: Santa Maria dell'Orazione e Morte, Rome; Dorli Photography on Flickr

For more on this topic, see Corpse Theatre in the Sacred Spaces of Italy: Guest post by Elizabeth Harper, All The Saints You Should Know Blog by clicking here.

Transmitting Thought: The Maimonides Dream Lab: A New Film by Ronni Thomas for Morbid Anatomy Museum Presents!

Below, Filmmaker in Residence Ronni Thomas--director of The Midnight Archive--introduces the newest episode of his Morbid Anatomy Museum Presents film series. Entitled "Transmitting Thought: The Maimonides Dream Lab," this short film introduces us to psychologist Dr. Stanley Krippner's provocative explorations of telepathic sensitivity and the dream state undertaken in 1960s Brooklyn.

You can view the film above or by clicking here; Stay tuned for more episodes which will premiere monthly on our new You Tube channel, which can be found here!

It is easy to subscribe to a set of rules when those rules are set by science rather than religion. But science lives with a bias -- that in order for an idea to be explored it must be observable, measurable and repeatable. Yet the irrational is part of our world, especially when it comes to the subject of human consciousness. Current scientific thinking brings an almost religious devotion to debunking anything that appears "irrational" or outside the rules and norms of core science. 

But such an approach leaves tremendous gaps in our understanding -- especially in questions of ESP, precognition, and other queries into non-physical intelligence. But this was not always the case. For a brief time, from roughly the 1930s to the 1960s, the field of academic parapsychology flourished in the United States. And at the forefront of the field was the American psychologist Dr. Stanley Krippner. In this film, Krippner discusses his research at the Maimonides Dream Lab in Brooklyn, NY in the 1960s. There, he and his colleagues conducted studies that explored the use of telepathy within the altered state of dreaming. 

Through numerous experiments, including one with the rock band The Grateful Dead, the Maimonides team produced substantial scientific research on the topic of ‘dream telepathy,’ until the demise of the lab's funding. Learn what we know -- and what we lost -- in Transmitting Thought : the Maimonides Dream Lab.  

— Ronni Thomas, Director

Animated Gif of an Ivory Anatomical Manikin Undergoing Auto Dissection

I found this wonderful ivory anatomical manikin imagination on the blog of the Special Collections, Archives, and Rare Books at the University of Missouri Libraries via the wonderful Tumblr account of Paula A. Ruiz, who kindly answered my recent call for imagery related to the Anatomical Venus.

More on the piece, sourced from the blog, below;  you can read the whole piece, and see more images, by clicking here.

... This object is an ivory anatomical manikin that belongs to the collection of the J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library here at the University of Missouri. It is probably German, dates from the eighteenth century, and is about 11 inches long...

Ivory manikins such as this one may have been used as educational tools by male doctors.  It’s not clear who was the intended audience for the objects. Were they used to demonstrate basic anatomy to medical students? Or laypeople? Or were they simply luxury objects, curiosities to be kept in a doctor’s study?

Most of the ivory anatomical manikins still extant today are pregnant females. The artist of this figure even connected the fetus to the womb with a small piece of thread to represent the umbilical cord.  Whether or not the imagination was something the original owner of this figure considered, we do not know.

Dilettanti Society in The Morbid Anatomy Library with Special Guest Mike Zohn of TV's Oddities! Decoding the Visual Language of Alchemy! Arcane Media! Upcoming Morbid Anatomy Events

We have many wonderful events coming up at Morbid Anatomy! 

First up, we have A Thief's Guide to Alchemy: Part 1, On the Language and Image or How to Read an Alchemical Text with alchemist Brian Cotnoir (Wednesday, June 3rd; tickets and more here). The next evening we'll be hosting the first iteration of the Dilettanti Society Happy Hour Cocktails and Show and Tell in the Morbid Anatomy Library presented by Art in the Age. This week's guest will be Mike Zohn of TV's Oddities, who will be presenting his collection of ancient and modern penises (Thursday, June 4th at 6:30 PM; tickets and more here). Later that evening will be a presentation of Arcane Media in the form of glass slides, magic lantern projections, and antique technologies (Thursday, June 4th at 8:00 PM; tickets and more here) followed the next night by Psychedelics and Death: A Brief Introduction with Psychotherapist Dr. Neal (Friday, June 5th; more info here).

We are also delighted to announce one new event: My Grandfather the Spirit Doctor and Me: On Medicine, Storytelling, Film and The Radio Illustrated Lecture with Chiara Ambrosio, London Based Filmmaker; this will take place on Monday, June 22nd at 8pm; Tickets and more info here.  

Following is a list of all upcoming events; we highly recommend purchasing tickets in advance! You can also become a member and be alerted about events before they are announced to the general public by clicking here.  

The Morbid Anatomy Museum is a non-profit, and depends on donations and memberships to survive. If you appreciate what we do, please consider becoming a member or making a fully tax deductible donation today. Donations can be made here, and you can become a member--with assorted perks such as discounted admissions and free museum entry by clicking here.

IMMEDIATELY UPCOMING EVENTS

• A Thief's Guide to Alchemy: Part I - Alchemy it's Language and Image or How to Read an Alchemical Text. An Illustrated Lecture with alchemist and author Brian Cotnoir. 
  Wednesday, June 3rd, 8pm - 10pm, $10 (3 lecture pass - $25), Tickets (and more info) here.

• Morbid Anatomy and Art in the Age Present: The Dilettanti Society Happy Hour - Cocktails and Show and Tell in the Morbid Anatomy Library featuring Mike Zohn of TV's Oddities, who will be presenting his collection of ancient and modern penises
  Thursday June 4th, 6:30pm - 8pm, $20 ($12 for members), LIMITED SEATING, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Arcane Project: An Evening of Glass slides, Magic Lantern Projections, and Antique Technologies. 
  Thursday, June 4th, 8pm - 10pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• Psychedelics and Death: A Brief Introduction. An Illustrated Lecture with Psychotherapist Dr. Neal 
  Friday, June 5th, 8pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

NEWLY ANNOUNCED EVENTS

• My Grandfather the Spirit Doctor and Me: On Medicine, Storytelling, Film and The Radio Illustrated Lecture with Chiara Ambrosio, London Based Filmmaker
  Monday, June 22nd, 8pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

ALL UPCOMING EVENTS

• A Thief's Guide to Alchemy: Part I - Alchemy it's Language and Image or How to Read an Alchemical Text. An Illustrated Lecture with alchemist and author Brian Cotnoir. 
  Wednesday, June 3rd, 8pm - 10pm, $10 (3 lecture pass - $25), Tickets (and more info) here.

• Morbid Anatomy and Art in the Age Present: The Dilettanti Society Happy Hour - Cocktails and Show and Tell in the Morbid Anatomy Library featuring Mike Zohn of TV's Oddities presenting his collection of ancient and modern penises
  Thursday June 4th, 6:30pm - 8pm, $20 ($12 for members), LIMITED SEATING, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Arcane Project: An evening of glass slides, magic lantern projections, and antique technologies. 
  Thursday, June 4th, 8pm - 10pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• Psychedelics and Death: A Brief Introduction. An Illustrated Lecture with Psychotherapist Dr. Neal 
  Friday, June 5th, 8pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

• Anthropomorphic Rabbit Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman 
  Saturday, June 6th, 12pm - 7pm, $300 (includes admission to the museum), $300, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Fancy Chicken Taxidermy Class with Divya Anatharaman
  Sunday, June 7th, 12pm - 7pm, $400 (includes admission to the museum), SOLD OUT (info here)

• A Thief's Guide to Alchemy: Part 2 - Alchemy: Substance and Symbol. An Illustrated Lecture with alchemist and author Brian Cotnoir. Wednesday, June 10th, 8pm - 10pm, $10 (3 lecture pass - $25), Tickets (and more info) here.

• Capulet Gynecologist, Montague Onanist: Medieval Sex, Renaissance Death, and Romeo and Juliet. An Illustrated Lecture with Lois Leveen 
  Thursday June 11th, 8pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• Anthropomorphic Insect Shadowbox Workshop with Daisy Tainton Saturday 
  Saturday, June 13th, 1pm - 4 pm, $75, Tickets (and more info) here

• A Thief's Guide to Alchemy: Part 3 - Alchemical Methods and Tools both Physical and Metaphysical.  An Illustrated Lecture with alchemist and author Brian Cotnoir. 
  Wednesday, June 17th, 8pm - 10pm, $10 (3 lecture pass - $25), Tickets (and more info) here

• Tarantula Preservation Class Thursday with Divya Anantharaman
  Thursday, June 18th, 6:30pm - 9:30pm, $80 (includes admission to the museum), SOLD OUT (info here)

• The Emerald Tablet - Alchemical Distilation Workshop with Brian Cotnoir. 
  Saturday, June 20th, 12pm - 6pm, $100, Tickets (and more info) here.

• My Grandfather the Spirit Doctor and Me: On Medicine, Storytelling, Film and The Radio Illustrated Lecture with Chiara Ambrosio, London Based Filmmaker
  Monday, June 22nd, 8pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

• A Desire for Dramaticism: Semiotics of the 1980s Goth Subculture: An illustrated lecture with Andi Harriman 
  Tuesday, June 23rd, 8pm - 10 pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

• Search for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, An Illustrated Lecture with Peter Nevramont. 
  Wednesday, June 24th, 8pm - 10pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here

• "Witchcraft Through the Ages” (Haxan) – Polka music! Butter Churns!! 16mm silent film screening with Victrola!!! Presented and choreographed by Joel Schlemowitz 
  Thursday, June 25th, 8pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

• "Witchcraft Through the Ages” (Haxan) – Polka music! Butter Churns!! 16mm silent film screening with Victrola!!! Presented and choreographed by Joel Schlemowitz 
  Thursday, June 26th, 8pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)
  

• Morbid Anatomy Flea Market
  Sunday, June 28th, 12pm - 6pm, FREE, more info here.
  

• Madness and Meaning: An Illustrated Lecture with Andrew Scull, Author of Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine
  Monday, June 29th, 8pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Movie Mike Presents : Morbid Movie Madness - A Survey of Serials of the 30s and 40s First Chapters of Thrilling Tales in 16mm!
  Saturday, June 30th, $10, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Now You See It, Now You Don't: The Psychology of Magic, an Illustrated Lecture with Robert Teszka 
  Thursday, July 2nd, 8pm - 10pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• The Right Mixture: The Theory and History of the Four Humours (as told with cocktails), an Illustrated lecture with Michael Goyette, PhD 
  Thursday, July 9th, 8pm - 10pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• Psychedelics and Death: A Brief Introduction. An Illustrated Lecture with Psychotherapist Dr. Neal  
  Friday July 10th, 8pm - 10pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here).

• Anthropomorphic Mouse Taxidermy Class, One or Two Headed! with Divya Anantharaman
  Saturday, July 11th, 12pm - 6pm, $110 for one, $125 for two headed (all tickets include admission to the museum), SOLD OUT (info here).

• Chick Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman 
  Sunday, July 12th, 12pm-6:30pm,  $185 for one, $200 for two headed (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Stolen Armor, Bullet Sculptures, Photos of the Dead: Soldiers' Souvenirs, or The Things They Carried (Home). A Panel with Joanna Scutts, Lauren Walsh and Susan Harlan 
  Tuesday July 14th, 8pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• 'The Gothic Sensibility: Victorian 'Gloomths' and the Contemporary 'Death Curious': An Illustrated Lecture with Romany Reagan. 
  Tuesday, July 21st, 8pm - 10pm, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

• Placebos, Nocebos and Voodoo Medicine, An Illustrated Lecture with Mark W Green MD, FAAN Professor of Neurology, Anesthesiology, and Rehabilitation Medicine 
  Wednesday, July 22nd, 8pm - 10pm, Tickets (and more info) here

• Jackalope Taxidermy Class with Katie Innamorato 
  Saturday, July 25th, 12pm - 6pm, $250 (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Rat/Guinea Pigs Taxidermy Class with Katie Innamorato 
  Sunday, July 26th, 12pm - 6pm, $200 (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Movie Mike Presents : Morbid Movie Madness - Bluebeard with John Carradine as the serial strangler of women in old Paris in 16mm!
  Tuesday, July 28th, 8pm, $10, Tickets (and more info) here.

• 'The Gothic Sensibility: Victorian 'Gloomths' and the Contemporary 'Death Curious' : An Illustrated Lecture with Romany Reagan 
  Friday, July 29th, 8pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

• The Even More Disturbing and Absurd World of Medical Patents: An Illustrated Lecture with Eric Indin, Registered Patent Attorney. 
  Thursday, July 30th,  8pm - 10pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Chipmunk Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman
  Saturday, August 1st, 12pm - 6pm, $185 (all tickets include admission to the museum), SOLD OUT ( info here)

• Skunk Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman
  Sunday, August 2nd, 12pm - 6pm, $450 (includes admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Evening Anthropomorphic Mouse Taxidermy Class with Divya Anantharaman 
  Wednesday, August 5th, 6:30pm - 10:30pm, $110 (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Psychedelics and Death: A Brief Introduction: An Illustrated Lecture with Psychotherapist Dr. Neal Goldsmith
  Friday, August 7th, 8pm - 10 PM, $8, SOLD OUT (info here)

• The Embalmed Head of Oliver Cromwell: A Memoir: An Illustrated Lecture with Mark Hartzman
  Wednesday, August 19th, 8pm, $8, Tickets (and more info) here.

• Starling Taxidermy Class with Katie Innamorato 
  Saturday, August 22nd, 12pm - 6pm, $275 (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Rat/ Guinea Pig with Wings Gaff Taxidermy Class with Katie Innamorato 
  Sunday, August 23rd, 12pm - 6pm, $235 (all tickets include admission to the museum), Tickets (and more info) here

• Hannibal Lecter, Book Collector, An Illustrated Lecture with Elisabeth Brander, Rare Book Librarian at Washington University 
  Thursday, October 8th, 8pm, Tickets (and more info) here

Image: Dilettanti Members by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Frau Welt

An allegorical figure occurring frequently in medieval literature. Seen from the front she is beautiful; when she turns round, her back is a mass of decay, maggots, and noisome creatures. ...

-- Frau Welt, The Oxford Companion to German Literature

More--and image sourced--here.

The Ether Dome: Guest Post by Sarah Alger

Following is a fascinating guest post about "The Ether Dome" and the world of pre-anesthesia surgery by Sarah Alger, director of the Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital. You can follow her on Twitter at @slodoena.

“The horror of great darkness, and the sense of desertion by God and man, bordering close on despair, which swept through my mind and overwhelmed my heart, I can never forget, however gladly I would do so ... I still recall with unwelcome vividness the spreading out of the instruments, the twisting of the tourniquet, the first incision, the fingering of the sawed bone, the sponge pressed on the flap, the tying of the blood-vessels, the stitching of the skin, the bloody dismembered limb lying on the floor.”
Such was surgery before anesthesia, as described by George Wilson, who underwent an ankle amputation in 1843. 

When Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston was designed in the early 1800s, its operating theater was placed under a dome at the top of the building both to admit natural light through skylights and windows and to allow surgical patients’ screams to drift up and out of earshot of patients in the wards below. 

Not only was surgery a horror for the patient, it was also a trial for the surgeon. Contending with a conscious, writhing patient, surgeons were forced to be swift. Head surgeon and hospital co-founder John Collins Warren could reputedly amputate a limb in 40 seconds. 

While Warren was wrestling with his patients, about 100 miles away in Hartford, Conn., a dentist named Horace Wells attended a demonstration in which volunteers were given nitrous oxide—laughing gas—to get silly for the audience’s amusement. The gas seemed to dull pain in these volunteers, he observed, so he wondered: Could it help his dental patients? After a dozen successful painless tooth extractions in his practice (including on himself), he persuaded Harvard Medical School to allow him to demonstrate before a crowd. Yet his patient did claim to feel pain, perhaps because of inadequate dosage, and Wells was subjected to cries of “Humbug!” Wells slunk back to Hartford, discouraged. Yet his young apprentice, William T.G. Morton, picked up the research where Wells left off, befriending a Harvard chemist named Charles Jackson, who suggested that Morton experiment with sulfuric ether. (Ether, like nitrous oxide, was used as a party drug in so-called “ether frolics”.) Jackson appeared to know that ether could be useful in surgery, but for reasons lost to history, never acted on that knowledge. After successfully experimenting on family pets, himself and his dental patients, he lobbied to demonstrate on a surgical patient at Mass General. 

On the morning of October 16, 1846, a 21-year-old printer named Gilbert Abbott was brought into the operating theater. Warren, who was to operate on a vascular malformation on Abbott’s neck, and the assembled crowd in the tiered seats above waited for Morton to arrive. Finally, half an hour late, Morton arrived toting a glass inhaler he had commissioned for the demonstration. Warren, with impatience, stated: “Sir, your patient.” Morton used the inhaler to administer the gas, and when it appeared that Abbott had dropped off, he replied to Warren: “Sir, your patient.” Warren performed the surgery without incident, and the assembly waited for Abbott to awaken. When he did, he was asked: Did he feel any pain? “Has the procedure begun yet?” he responded, for he had felt only a dull scratching. At this Warren turned to the crowd and intoned: “Gentlemen, this is no humbug.” (For a 1936 silent reenactment of the event, starring contemporary Mass General staff in fake sideburns, click here.) 

Just a month later, Mass General surgeon Henry Jacob Bigelow published a paper in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal about the demonstration, and from there the word spread. In Paris, the first operation using ether occurred December 15; in London, December 21. By 1847 the news had carried worldwide. Meanwhile, in Boston, dentist Nathan Cooley Keep became the first to administer ether for obstetrics—to poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s wife Fanny. “I am very sorry you all thought me so rash and naughty in trying the ether,” she wrote to her family. “I feel proud to be the pioneer to less suffering for poor, weak womankind.” It wasn’t just her family who had feared for her—it took a while for her to find someone who would administer ether. The embrace of anesthesia was not universal—physicians and the public alike had their qualms. Little was known about dosage, so the risk of death from anesthesia did exist, as did worries about ether’s flammability. Moreover, religious objections abounded—pain, not least in childbirth, was viewed as God’s will. Robert Liston, before performing that first surgery under ether in London, deemed ether a “Yankee dodge.” Yet upon witnessing how well it worked, he said: “This Yankee dodge beats mesmerism [a previous medical fad] hollow.” 

In 1853, Queen Victoria was administered chloroform at the birth of Prince Leopold, further legitimizing anesthesia’s use in obstetrics, and in the United States, the battlefield injuries of the Civil War sped its adoption. 

Yet as this miracle took hold, the key players in its discovery descended into controversy. Horace Wells, Charles Jackson and William T.G. Morton waged bitter pamphleteering wars for 20 years over who should get the credit. (Jackson, it must be noted, also claimed to have given Samuel Morse the idea for the telegraph—to what extent that’s true, we’ll never know.) The debate reached Congress, which ruled in favor of Morton because he had published first. Wells moved to New York, was arrested for throwing acid on prostitutes, and killed himself in jail after taking chloroform; Jackson died at McLean Asylum outside Boston; and Morton, becoming feverish after reading a newspaper article arguing that Jackson should get most of the credit, threw himself into a pond in Central Park and died soon after. Meanwhile, a Georgia country doctor named Crawford Long, having attended ether frolics, had conducted a successful painless surgery in March 1842, but did not publish his news until well after the Mass General demonstration, escaping both the limelight and the concurrent misery. 

The surgical theater at Mass General, which came to be known as the Ether Dome, still stands in the hospital’s original building. A teaching skeleton, a plaster cast of the Apollo Belvedere, and an Egyptian mummy named Padihershef, who was a gift to the hospital in the 1820s, all keep watch over the Dome as they did in 1846. A newer addition is a 2000 oil painting recreating a moment during the surgery. Abbott is bound to the surgical chair by a leather strap, as was typical practice then, but there is no need for it: His hands are slack. He is at peace. 

Image: Ether Dome. Massachusetts General Hospital.

In Search of Anatomical Venuses and Popular Anatomical Imagery!

We are currently in the process of researching imagery related to popular anatomical display, anatomically themed panopticons, Anatomical Venuses, or eroticisized reclining female wax figures. If you have any suggestions, please email joanna [at] morbidanatomymuseum [dot] org! Thank you!

Image: Poster from the Roca collection. Collection Family Coolen, Antwerp/Museum Dr Guislain, Ghent, Belgium. More here.

Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future: An Interview with Paleofuture's Matt Novak by Cristina Preda

Following is a guest post by Cristina Preda in which she interviews Matt Novak of the Paleofuture blog about one of her favorite books residing in the Morbid Anatomy Library: Corn and Horrigan's Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future.

In 1984, the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. opened Yesterday’s Tomorrows, an exhibition showcasing hundreds of objects and ephemera from the American mid-century as they pertained to people’s visions of the future, and a book by the same name was published as a companion. Written by the exhibit’s curators, historians Joseph J. Corn and Brian Horrigan, Yesterday’s Tomorrows explores the communities, homes, transportation, weapons and warfare of our supposed future. Copies of the book eventually found their way into the Morbid Anatomy Library and into the hands of Matt Novak, writer of Gizmodo’s Paleofuture blog. I spoke to Matt recently about American retro-futures, collecting, and how an exhibit he never saw changed his life. 

How did you come to discover Yesterday’s Tomorrows? 
Back in 2007 I was finishing up school at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and was looking for a topic for a blog for this class I had started. It was a writing class where you start a blog, and I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. There’d been this idea that I’d been thinking about for a long time which was how people of the past imagined the future. So, I started the blog and expected it to be just something that would run its course through the class. The more I researched it, the more I loved the topic, and I came across this book called Yesterday’s Tomorrows which really helped solidify that this was something worth exploring further. After I was done with school, I reached out to one of the authors of the book, Brian Horrigan, and it turned out he lived literally a mile down the street from me. 

You mentioned that he gifted you some of the artifacts from the original exhibit. What were they?
Some books and magazines, some really unique one-of-a-kind stuff like personal letters from Buckminster Fuller, some photos. [Brian Horrigan] interviewed Buckminster Fuller shortly before he died in the early eighties and gave me some recordings from that, illustrations and photos from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, film stills from old futuristic movies like Things To Come, old newspaper clippings, and a bunch of things he used to help do the Smithsonian exhibit and the book.  

Did you consider yourself a collector prior to receiving those items?
I was kind of a collector before that. I almost immediately started buying old books and magazines. Part of the mission of the blog was to introduce new things to the internet. So many people think of blogging as just regurgitating images and reblogging, and I was trying to digitize stuff to help contribute to the strange, beautiful, weird thing that we call the internet. I think that’s part of why I was lucky enough to be successful with it. I was putting stuff online that people hadn’t seen yet. 

What is your most prized item?
That’s a tough question! There’s this one letter from Buckminster Fuller that’s written in his own hand. My favorite part about it is he underlines the year 1974 and puts a couple exclamation points after it. I just love that detail that speaks to his excitement that it’s the future. I have a couple video phones from the 1980s. I’m obsessed with the video phone because it’s something that arrived but not in the form that we expected. I think that that’s what makes it interesting—that even if someone is absolutely correct the prediction is often in the eye of the beholder. 

A lot of architectural imagery up until the 50s depicts these grand vertical sprawls with impossibly tall buildings interconnected by bridges and roadways. After WWII, communities begin to sprawl outward. Would you agree that the shift was informed by, say, McCarthyism and espousing the virtues of American capitalism and individualism? And in this regard, does the role of prognosticators become implicitly entangled with toeing the party line?
If you’re looking at consumer-based futurism, of course there’s a certain aspect of conformity. I think I take issue with the idea that the first half of the 20th century was only about moving upward. That’s certainly a vision of the future that architects embraced, especially in the 20s with the huge rise of the skyscrapers. But there’s significant pushback when you look at Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision of utopian futuristic society in the 1930s. His Broadacre scheme was a scheme to push people out—it was an early vision of suburban America. We often like to think that a dominant narrative of any given era’s futurism is the only one. We have to remind ourselves that people in any given generation don’t all think alike. I fall into this trap everyday and I have to continually pull myself back and remind myself that no matter how dominant a narrative was, there was always someone who said, “wait a second here, this not how it should be done and this is not how it’s going to be.” 

I noticed that the workplace of tomorrow is missing from the book and that struck me as odd since Americans are so work-obsessed. You talk about this in The Late Great American Promise of Less Work. What happened that made it so un-American to imagine a less laborious future?
It seems to me that we have decided that it’s un-American to aspire to work less, which is very strange. Even people in the 1950s and 60s who were conservatively-minded believed that taking long vacations was a sign that you were doing something right. There does seem to be this incredible shift that happens in the second half of the 20th century where it’s no longer the ideal, where desiring to work less so that you can either spend more time at leisure or with your family is somehow seen as un-American. It’s disconcerting, especially given that we don’t have the same rights that a lot of other developed nations do when it comes to maternity leave and guaranteed vacation time. It’s almost as if there’s been a narrative that has totally warped and is currently poisoning our culture that the only thing you should aspire to is to work yourself to death.

Do you think there’s any getting back to that mid-century dream?
I don’t see the tide turning any time soon, but I think it very well could if the wealth gap continues to grow. So much of our current troubles have to do with that wealth gap, and if it continues to to grow there will be people who realize that government does have a role to play in certain things such as parental leave. These are basic things that every other developed country has figured out that aren’t even on the national agenda.  

Regarding the home of tomorrow, you point out that people in those years were preoccupied with protecting their homes from the elements. How much of that had to do with actual comfort and how much was escapism vis-a-vis fear of nuclear warfare?
There was almost a “fallout shelter chic” to a lot of things. You see this in a lot of mid-century modern design. 

You’ve promised to eat the sun if the AeroMobil flying car is actually released to the public in two years. I agree with your points as to why it won’t happen. It’s so impractical that it’s stupid, and we need to get over the flying car. Where would you like to see future transportation go instead?
Personally, a combination of more mass transit and better alternative fuel for passenger cars. I live in LA, and for a couple years I didn’t have a car which astounded people. 

The last chapter in the book deals with the weapons and warfare of the future. Have we accepted that war is just inevitable for life on earth, or do we like it? I feel like futurism, and especially retrofuturism, is generally so optimistic that it’s eery. Why aren’t we imagining peace? Why are we just thinking of better, bigger ways to bomb everyone?
I think because our economy depends so much on it that we can’t imagine any other way. There’s a couple different angles by which to approach this. One is to look at removing troops from the battlefield. That was one tactic of making war less horrific. There were some visions of the future from the 1930s where giant robots would do battle, and that plays into the idea of remote war. You’re seeing this a lot today where someone sitting at a computer screen is controlling a drone halfway around the world, and that’s really not a new idea but it is one that’s becoming very much a reality in a lot of aspects of warfare today. We’re also seeing that those tactics don’t necessarily work better when it comes to defeating an enemy. When you can’t see the enemy you don’t know if you’re bombing your intended target or a mass of school children. There’s also this idea that we see time and again of people who thought that if you make war so horrific it would no longer be a thing. Nuclear weapons would make war so horrific that nations would no longer go to war, which obviously wasn’t the case. And the same goes for other futuristic weapons—let’s make things so bad that there’ll just be a stalemate and no one would ever go to war. Obviously, that never pans out. 

Joseph Corn’s challenge to you was that you never accept preconceived notions about people and their attitudes toward the future. What advice would you give someone just beginning to approach this field today?
I would say if you’re interested in this topic, look in unusual places for aspects of futurism. It’s so easy to pick up a sci-fi book from the 50s and say this is a vision of the future. What interests me more these days are weird nooks and crannies where you can find a lot of interesting futurisms in areas you wouldn’t expect. This is what makes the topic so fascinating to me. It’s not just flying cars and jetpacks. There’s the futurism of social movements, the futurism of utopian communities, the futurism of pets. You can look at any topic and there’s people who had predictions about that particular area and had some really unique ways of looking at it. The study of past futures has definitely matured since I started eight years ago, and you can find all sorts of weird stories in places you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be. 

IMAGE LIST

1. Illustration from Hugo Gernsback’s Ralph 124C 41+ by Frank R. Paul, 1925
2. “Trade Your Troubles for a Bubble,” back cover from Amazing Stories, 1946
3. Rick Guidice, “Sport in Space Colony,” circa 1977
4. Syd Mead, “Megastructure,” circa 1969
5. Still from the H.G. Wells film Things to Come, 1936.
6. Un voyage dans la lune, 1902.

The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760-1860, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Through July 26, 2015

When in New Haven for the joint Medical Museums Association/American Association for the History of Medicine meeting, I was lucky enough to see, with Michael Sappol and Eva Åhrén, the wonderful exhibition The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760-1860 at the Yale University Art Gallery. A fabulous and thought provoking exhibition drawing from the rich collections of The Yale Center for British Art, and intending to challenge "the traditional notion of the Romantic artist as a brooding genius given to introversion and fantasy. Instead, the exhibition’s eight thematic sections juxtapose arresting works that reveal the Romantics as attentive explorers of their natural and cultural worlds."

Some highlights: (in order, top to bottom): a tempera painting by William Blake of the Madonna and Child from 1825; hand-painted pages from Blake's "America. A Prophecy," 1793; John Martin's "The Deluge," 1834; "A Lion Attacking a Horse," 1762, by George Stubbs; and James Gillray's "The Blood of the Murdered Crying for Vengeance," 1793.

I highly recommend going to see this exhibition if you can! Its up through July 26, 2015. You can find out more--and see more images!--here.