Mysterious 1933 Autopsy Film: Michael Sappol from the National Library of Medicine Collection

Michael Sappol--historian at the National Library of Medicine, author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies, and curator of Dream Anatomy--just shared news of a mysterious film in his Library's collection. This 1933 film contains, in the Library's own words, "an autopsy, perhaps the first ever performed before a motion picture camera. On screen, a bespectacled man in a white coat happily cuts open an unidentified dead man, chatting all the while with students and colleagues..."

You can watch the film (probably NSFW) above. The full description of the film follows; you can also read a post about it on the Circulating Now blog.

Herr Professor Doktor Jakob Erdheim Search the transcript
1933 / 5:16
Film fragment, no producer, no director, Vienna, Austria
Silent, black-and-white.

Sometime in the last century a fragment of silent film landed at the National Library of Medicine. How it got there is a mystery: no paperwork survives to tell the tale; no other prints of the film appear to have survived; no other sources on its making or showing have turned up. The film itself gives no direct information on its origins or purpose. It has no real title or credits, only a single intertitle that tersely announces the featured player, setting, and time: “Herr Professor Doktor Jakob Erdheim. Prosektor. Krankenhaus Der Stadt Wien. September 1933.”

What comes after that is extraordinary, a minor landmark of medical cinema: an autopsy, perhaps the first ever performed before a motion picture camera. On screen, a bespectacled man in a white coat happily cuts open an unidentified dead man, chatting all the while with students and colleagues...

Medical Movies on the Web: The Mysterious Case of Petr Anokhin, Soviet Scientific Cinema, and the Conjoined Twins, Circa 1957

Our good friend Michael Sappol--author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies, curator of Dream Anatomy, and historian at the National Library of Medicine--just alerted us to a rare 1957 film about conjoined twins produced by the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow that has recently been digitized by the National Library of Medicine.

Full details on the film follow, and a few stills from the film can be found above. You can view the film in its entirety above (click play on top image) or at Medical Movies on the Web by clicking here.

In 1957, the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow released an unusual motion picture, Neural and Humoral Factors in the Regulation of Bodily Functions (Research on Conjoined Twins) (Исследования на неразделившихсия близнетсах). The Russian-language film was never widely circulated and is extremely rare: today the only accessible copy can be found in the historical audiovisuals collection of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. The 45 minute movie documents research conducted on two pairs of conjoined twins (Ira and Galia, and Masha and Dasha) each of whom had a shared circulatory system, but completely separate nervous systems. Supervised by the founder of Soviet neurocybernetics Petr Anokhin (1898-1974), the first pair was studied during 1937-38 and the second in 1950-57. Never intended to reach beyond a narrow specialist audience, the film offers a rare glimpse into the history of Soviet physiology and “scientific cinema,” a peculiar cinematographic genre that had a long and distinguished history in Soviet Russia.

While the conjoined twins presented a unique opportunity for research into a variety of interesting questions — physiological and also psychological, genetic, immunological, and embryological — the movie only addresses the issue of the relative roles of neural and humoral (circulatory and lymphatic) factors in the functioning of the human organism, according the theories espoused by Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), Russia’s first Nobel Prize winner and the doyen of Soviet physiology. Yet surprisingly, Pavlov himself is never mentioned in the film’s running commentary, and the film gives very little information on either Ira and Galia or Masha and Dasha. Only Masha and Dasha lived to adulthood and, even though they were made to serve as child human research subjects, without the consent of parents or guardians, in some ways the film marks the happiest part of their lives, up to around the time of their seventh birthday, when they were well attended to and received relatively good treatment.

These puzzles are the subject of Nikolai Krementsov’s article, “A Cinematic and Physiological Puzzle: Conjoined Twins Research, Scientific Cinema and Pavlovian Physiology”.

To see the film in its entirety (in both a Russian-language closed-captioned-for-the-hearing-impaired version and an English-subtitled version) — and to read the essay, go to Medical Movies on the Web at https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/collections/films/medicalmoviesontheweb/index.html.

How to Kill an Animal Humanely: Guest Post by Michael Sappol, National Library of Medicine

Below is a guest post by our good friend Michael Sappol, author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies, curator of Dream Anatomy, and historian at The National Library of Medicine. It was originally posted on their wonderful Circulating Now blog.

Is empathy innate? Are we all born with the ability to identify with the emotions of others, to feel someone else’s pain? Today’s media is chock full of stories about experiments in neuroscience and child psychology that seem to show that the emergence and growth of the ability to empathize is a natural part of human psychological development, present even in toddlers.

Yet human beings periodically commit terrible acts of cruelty and violence, and are often indifferent to suffering. What if the development of empathy is a precious and fragile cultural accomplishment, something that has developed in fits and starts over time, in certain historical moments, in certain places, among certain people? Maybe most people have the ability to empathize, but what if empathy is a set of practices and beliefs that have to be learned and cultivated in order for individuals to exercise it? Those practices and beliefs would, of necessity, only fully develop in a society that has come to place a high value on empathy, that formally and informally rewards empathic behavior and punishes cruelty and indifference, a society that devotes resources to teaching, rehearsing and developing methods of empathy.

How to Kill Animals Humanely is a relic of the history of empathy. English-speaking people originally used the terms “human” and “humane” interchangeably, merely to distinguish human beings from other “brute” animal species. Sometime in the early 18th century, “humane” began to have a special use: to denote a compassionate, caring attitude toward the suffering of other humans and animals, a profound sensitivity that was both a moral obligation and a psychological condition. The word “humane” increasingly came to be used in opposition to “inhumane,” a term that was applied to acts of cruelty to other living beings, and to the people who took pleasure in inflicting suffering or who were just callously indifferent. In the 19th century, “humane” societies were founded to “prevent cruelty,” first to animals (and later to children), first in Great Britain and then in the United States.

This pamphlet, a publication of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA), is both a polemic against “needless cruelty” and a handy guide for those who are obliged to slaughter animals for food, medical research, or—in the case of injured or ailing animals—for purposes of euthanasia. “If you must kill them, do it without cruelty. Every animal has a right to justice and protection at the hands of the superior animal—man….” (This was very unlike contemporary antivivisectionism and vegetarianism, and later People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which absolutely opposed the slaughter of animals, and which criticized the very notion of human moral superiority.)

The author, Dr. Daniel Denison Slade, was a socially prominent surgeon and veterinarian, founder of the Boston Veterinary Institute, professor of applied zoology at Harvard, director of the MSPCA, and a man of many other interests. Being a veterinarian of longstanding practice, Dr. Slade was an expert on animal slaughter. In his little pamphlet he considers how “the Jews,” Germans, French and Dutch do their killing, but in the end makes his own recommendations, supplemented by helpful illustrations. Ways to kill animals “in the most humane manner possible,” must vary according to the varying anatomical structure of different species: horses, cows, dogs, pigs, cats, poultry, Dr. Slade tells us. Even fish should be killed humanely. For most mammals, the creature should receive powerful blows to the head with a mallet— precisely where depends on the species and individual beast—stunning the animal into unconsciousness, and then finishing it off with more blows or a bullet or a blast from a shotgun. Slade also considers other techniques to lessen the suffering, even chloroform. But he warns against “pithing” a method “commonly in vogue,” in which the “spinal cord is severed or punctured between the first and second bones of the neck.” Such an approach, he worries, is “undoubtedly attended by more suffering than other methods.”

Although humane techniques of slaughter may require some practice to get right and a bit more work, Slade argues, they can also improve “the wholesomeness of meat for food, and the market value of the animal slaughtered; there being no question as to the effects of torture, cruelty and fear upon the secretions, and if upon the secretions, necessarily upon the flesh.” He finishes the pamphlet with a long listing of the mission and accomplishments of the MSPCA (including the provision to Boston police stations of “hammers and hoods for killing horses mercifully”), followed by the Society’s “thirty-nine articles of faith” and a fee schedule for membership.

Read other How To… features from the NLM Collections here.
Michael Sappol is a historian in the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine.

Image List

1. How to Kill Animals Humanely, 1879. By D. D. Slade, M. D. 
2. A longitudinal section of the skull of a horse. Original caption: Situation of the brain. Fig. 1 
3. A drawing of a horse's head indicating where the humane stunning blow should fall. Original Caption The horse may be destroyed by blows upon the head, by the bullet, or by chloroform.1. by blows.– Having blindfolded the horse, the operator, armed with a heavy axe or hammer, should stand upon the side and to the front of the anumal, directing his blow to a point in the middle of a line drawn across the forehead from the dentere of the pit above the eye. See Fig. 2. One vigorous and well-directed blow will fell the animal, but the blow should be repeated to make destruction sure.
4. A longitudinal section of the skull of a cow.
5. A drawing of a cow's head indicating where the humane stunning blow should fall.  Page 9…vessels, or by plunging a long and sharp-pointed knife into the heart and large blood-vessels at a point corresponding to the upper potion of the brisket, and just above the breast-bone.
   Failure to fell the animal at the first blow cannot be attributed to any difference in the anatomical structure of the part, but rather to the fact that the blow was ill-directed, almost invariably too low, that it was not sufficiently powerful, or that both of these faults were combined.
6. "Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith". D. D. (Daniel Denison) Slade (1823–1896), How to Kill Animals Humanely (Boston: Issued by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, [1879?]). 15 pp., illustrated. 4” x 6½”.
7. "Rates of Membership". D. D. (Daniel Denison) Slade (1823–1896), How to Kill Animals Humanely (Boston: Issued by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, [1879?]). 15 pp., illustrated. 4” x 6½”.

Physiological Ads for the Modern Self: Guest Post by Michael Sappol

Below is a guest post on anatomical modernist Fritz Kahn and "Physiological Ads for the Modern Self" by our good friend Michael Sappol, author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies, curator of Dream Anatomy, and historian at the National Library of Medicine. It was originally posted on their wonderful Circulating Now blog.

Fritz Kahn (1888–1968), a German-Jewish physician-author, was the first great exponent of the conceptual medical illustration—illustrations that go beyond the representation of human anatomy to visually explain processes that occur within the human body. His published works, aimed at a mass readership, contain thousands of imaginative images, produced by a cadre of talented commercial artists. In Kahn’s Das Leben des Menschen (5 vols., 1922–31), many of the illustrations copy the look of contem­porary advertisement, with display type, sub­headings, physically attractive models, etc. But they are not intended to sell a product: instead the human body, its structure and functions, are what’s advertised. 

In Der Mensch Gesund und Krank (2 vols., 1939) the figures are mainly given a standard format that no longer permits headline-style display type within the frame of the illustration. This greater design consistency made for a more streamlined modern look. But Kahn never fully embraced consistency in presentation: he and his artists still eclectically borrowed from a variety of advertising design and illustration methods and subjects.That approach was not invented by Kahn and his artists. Anti-tuberculosis, pure food, sani­tary cleanliness and anti-venereal dis­ease cam­paigns before, during and after World War I, were already using tech­niques of adver­tis­ing, with varying degrees of artfulness, in Germany, France, Great Britain, the United States and other coun­tries. But in Kahn’s books lessons on anatomy, physiology, microbiology and path­ology take center-stage without any directly instrumental purpose. 

Take for example “The Sensory Organs of the Head,” which uses the encircled face of a beautiful woman to present a lesson on cellular physiology and the senses. The setting is the home (then accounted as “woman’s sphere”). Haloed by a circular band around her head, the female figure resembles a Holly­wood starlet. Within the spotlight, her head is tilted back and lips parted slightly. The pose is ambivalent: Is she overwhelmed, frightened, on the edge of sexual arousal? None of these are particularly relevant to the lesson at hand, but all of them are relevant to the aims of the author and his artist, which is to get the reader to pay attention to the image. The illustration mimics con­tem­porary movie posters, glamor magazines and cosmetics ad­ver­tise­­ments. The glamor girl is bom­bard­ed with the prolife­rating sensual experi­ences of modern­ity. The spe­­cialized sensory re­ceptor cells seem to be shoot­ing out along radiating dashed line-tracks launched from the tech­nolo­gies, com­mod­i­ties and experiences of everyday life. Heat is repre­sen­t­ed by a steam radia­tor; sound by a phono­graph; light an electric lamp; cold a draft coming through an open win­dow. The cells, like futuristic aliens or sur­realist­ic­al­ly distorted spermatozoa, seem to be attacking, pushing to penetrate the protective circle to gain access to the female sub­ject and achieve “the reception of stimuli arising at a distance.”
Everything about “The Sensory Organs of the Head” tells the reader that we are in the modern world, but the aesthetic of the image comes entirely out of commercial advertising, and not modern art. 

In other illustrations, especially in the 1930s, Kahn’s artists were influenced by modern art and modernist poster and magazine advertisement. There was a two-way traffic in images: phar­ma­­ceutical manufac­turers were mak­ing illustr­ated ads that took up some of the same themes that Kahn fea­tured—images showing stylized interior pathways of the respiratory and digestive systems. A few years after the publication of Kahn’s 1926 color poster “Der Mensch als Industrie­pa­l­ast” (a collaboration with uncredited artist Fritz Schüler), Chem­ische Fabrik Promonta GmbH hired Kahn and Schüler to produce similar illustrations for advertisements for their pharmaceutical products. 

The convergence of advertising illustration and fine art—the dynamic exchange of stylistic moves and aesthetic principles—is now so familiar to us, so pervasive, as to almost be invisible. We expect such things. But in the 1920s and ‘30s, this was something new and powerful, a way for Kahn, his artists, his readers—and commercial advertisers—to be modern and more modern still. Kahn’s images signify a condition of life and an aspiration: if humanity lived in the modern world of cars, machines, mass media, and proliferating advertisements, then such things were also inside of us. We are modern at the physiological core of embodied existence. 

Michael Sappol is a historian in the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine. This blogpost is adapted from Michael Sappol’s new book, How to Get Modern with Scientific Illustration(forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press, 2016)

Image List

1. An illustration that adopts the form of an advertisement.
   “The digestive zones in this area are: saliva–alkaline; gastric juices–acidic; pancreatic secretions–alkaline; colonic fermentation–acidic.”
   Das Leben des Menschen Vol. 3, 1926
2. “The sensory organs of the head, chiefly for reception of stimuli arising at a distance.”
   Der Mensch Gesund und Krank Vol. 1, 1939
3. In its composition, shaded textures and treatment of the figure (the lips!), an illustration that looks very much like a contemporary poster graphic.
   “Four ways to deliver drugs” [oral, intravenous, intramuscular, suppository].
   Der Mensch Gesund und Krank Vol. 1, 1939

Vesalius: Imagining the Body Exhibition, Leuven, Belgium: A Guest Post by Michael Sappol, National Library of Medicine

Following is another guest post by our good friend Michael Sappol--author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies, curator of Dream Anatomy, and historian at the National Library of Medicine--about an excellent looking exhibition in Leuven:

I recently had the privilege of participating in a brilliant three-day international conference on “Bodies Beyond Borders: The Circulation of Anatomical Knowledge, 1750-1950”.  The symposium — a smart mix of well-established scholars and new talent — was held in Leuven, Belgium, an ancient city full of charmingly twisted cobblestone streets and alleys. In the central square, the old town hall is covered from top to bottom with hundreds of stone figures. It’s a “where’s Waldo” exercise to spot anybody in particular, but one of the figures is the founder of modern anatomy, Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564). Vesalius twice studied at the University of Leuven (1530, 1536) before going on to Padua, where he performed dissections, gave lectures, wrote treatises and authored De humani corporis fabrica (1543), the first great illustrated atlas of anatomy.

Leuven also has a wonderful art museum: “M-Museum”. To commemorate the 500th anniversary of Vesalius’s birth, M has put on a brilliant show of anatomical art and objects. As one might expect, there are first editions of Vesalius, along with a register from the 1530s that lists Vesalius as one of the students enrolled in the university. But the exhibition goes from there right up to the present, and features many rare and amazing drawings, paintings, prints, models, sculptures, even the first x-ray “cinematograph” (1898). Highlights for me: Clemente Susini’s exquisite wax sculpture of a dissected cadaveric head (4th image down; 1798); Jan Wandelaar’s bigger than life-size sketches for Albinus’s Tabulae sceleti et musculorum (ca. 1726); a brilliantly hand-colored engraving of a 17th-century Dutch anatomical theater (bottom image); and… (Actually, I loved almost everything on display, and also love the way it was displayed. Congratulations to curator Geert Vanpaemel!)

You probably wish you could go to Leuven to see this show, but you can’t: it closes on January 18. (Boo-hoo.) (Sob.)

Following is more info about the exhibition, from the M-Museum website; you can find out more by clicking here.

From THU 02/10 until SUN 18/01
M-Museum Leuven
Leopold Vanderkelenstraat 28, 3000 Leuven
Curator: Geert Vanpaemel

The exhibition at M is the beating heart and the must see highlight of the citywide project, both for Vesalius experts and novices.

The exhibition highlights various and unexpected sides of Vesalius. You can admire the original version of the voluminous book 'Fabrica' or page through the digital version. Discover all about his life, work and life's work, from his humanist background to his direct influence on his contemporaries.

Discover how Greek sculpture inspired Vesalius, walk among detailed anatomical sketches and wax statues, and meet the famous Glass Man. Be amazed by the 'living' dead who candidly reveal what is concealed under their skin and experience how Vesalius' anatomical knowledge lives on in art and science. For example, even Rodin and Matisse were inspired by Vesalius' muscle men.

The exhibition presents a life-sized replica of an anatomical theatre – the place where live dissections were once performed. The exhibition also focuses on the evolution of medical imaging over the past 500 years. You can see how anatomy developed into a fully-fledged branch of medicine and how the human body gradually revealed its secrets over the centuries. Thanks to the possibilities that 3D modelling now provide, you can also explore the medical science of the future.

Vesalius will get under the skin of all the visitors to M, that much is certain. But you will also be captivated by the other cultural projects related to the world-famous anatomist. So come prepared!

Images:

1. Franz Tschackert, De Glazen man, 1930 © Deutsches Hygiene Museum, Dresden, inv. Volker Kreidler 1962.
2. Jacques Gautier D'Agoty , compleat Myologie color and natural size, 1746
3. Andreas Vesalius, De Tabulae Anatomicae, ca. 1540 © Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, inv. Imp II 42.417 C Est. 
4. William Pink, Smugglerius, 1834 (orig. 1775)  © Isabelle Arthuis 
5. Clemente Susini, De innervatie van het gezicht, 1798. © Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, Parijs - Direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.
6. Waxwork by Clemente Susini and painting  Anatomy Lesson of Dr . Frederik Ruysch by Adriaen Backer © Isabelle Arthuis 
7. Bust of a woman by André -Pierre Pinson and painting ' Anatomy Lesson of Dr . Frederik Ruysch ' from ' Adriaen Backer © Isabelle Arthuis 
8. Installation photo, © Isabelle Arthuis 
9. Anatomical theater, Joannes Blaeu Show Neel of the cities of the Vereenighde, Netherlands, with their descriptions 1649 © Royal Library of Belgium , III 94 530 E 1  

The Curiously Anatomized Bodies of John Arderne: Guest Post by Michael Sappol, National Library of Medicine

 

The incomparable Michael Sappol--author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies, curator of Dream Anatomy, and historian at the National Library of Medicine--recently traveled to Sweden where he encountered the curious 15th century illuminated vellum scroll seen above. In the following post, Mike tells us more about this scroll, and its idiosyncratic anatomical visualizations:

I recently traveled to sunny Sweden to participate in an international conference on “The History of Medicine in Practice.” Along the way I got to visit some historical medical collections, talk to historians, curators, archivists, rare book specialists, publishers and librarians, and see amazing objects.

Today’s post is about one amazing object: De Arte Phisicali et de Cirurgica (The Art of the Physician and the Surgeon), a long vellum scroll — 542 cm (17 feet 9 inches) by 36 cm (1 foot 2 inches)! It dates from the year 1412 and resides today in the National Library of Sweden (in Swedish, Kungliga Biblioteket, “The Royal Library,” but since Swedes hold their egalitarian ideals very dear, usually translated as “The National Library”).

The manuscript is composed of six skins of vellum (that’s calf-skin!) sewn together. It features numerous painted color illustrations, along with a text written by John Arderne (1307-ca. 1390), a master surgeon who lived in Newark in the county of Nottingham, England. How it got to Sweden is a bit of a mystery, but experts believe that it traveled over the North Sea sometime in the 1420s, sent by King Henry IV of England to help his daughter, Princess Philippa. She had been married off to King Erik of Sweden in 1406 at the tender age of 12 (and died in 1430 at age 34 of a miscarriage).

The text (in Latin) contains standard medical wisdom of its time: advice on diagnosis and how to treat various conditions in the form of a discussion of cases, along with helpful recipes. (A knowledge of astrology helps with all of this.) The scroll is also supplied with a large number of good-natured, even comical, illustrations. Mostly they show the usual diseases and problems (dysentery, dropsy, colic, pleurisy, belching, insomnia, bellyache) and the usual therapeutic methods (bleeding, cautery, purging and plastering). There are also pictures of surgical instruments, poisonous animals (watch out for toads!) and typical problems of delivering a baby.

What has attracted the most attention from scholars, and even the public, are the scroll’s painted illustrations of the anatomized body, split open like a book or a butchered animal. These occupy the middle of the scroll, between the two main columns of text (which makes no comment on them), and are very rare for the period, really quite astonishing.

I know all this because of a fine book recently published on the Arderne scroll by Fri Tanke Förlag (Free Thought Press) and the Hagströmer Library, as part of their bibliographic publication series: John Arderne, De Arte Phisicali et de Cirurgia, trans., commentary, Torgny Svenberg and Peter Murray Jones; afterword, Eva LQ Sandgren (Stockholm: Fri Tanke Förlag – Hagströmer Biblioteket, 2014).

Michael Sappol
History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine

All images from De Arte Phisicali et de Cirurgica (The Art of the Physician and the Surgeon), courtesy of the National Library of Sweden