CLAS 3239 | Ancient Medicine: The Classical Roots of the Medical Humanities: 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries

This engraving from 1620, created by Mattheus Greuter (housed in the Bibliothèque nationale de France), depicts a man with his head and upper body laying inside of a contraption that resembles a kiln (also perhaps recalling a modern fMRI machine!). From the opening at the top of the contraption, the man's thoughts billow out, laying his mind bare to observers. It has been suggested that the person attending the metaphorical apparatus is a physician, and the person whose thoughts are exposed is being treated for madness. For a closer look, see the image below, and for a more in depth analysis of this curious image and similar images from this time period, click on the link above.

Detail of image above.

In 18th-century Florence, wax museums displayed models of dissected dead people, designed to show medical students what lay beneath the skin of the human body. 1) Wax anatomical models. photograph by Daderot: Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze, Zoologia "La Specola", Florence, Italy. Wikimedia Commons

Wax anatomical model of an Anatomical Venus, pregnant woman with a foetus. At the end of the 18th century "Anatomical Venuses" acquired great popularity in European museums. The exhibition of whole body anatomical figures disseminated knowledge without much effort on the part of the observer through an accurate representation of nature. The Anatomical Venus combines an evident external beauty with anatomical rigor of internal components of the human body, taken from the medical knowledge acquired in the practice of dissection. Barcelona, unknown modeller and workshop, second half of the 19th Century, Museu d'Història de la Medicina de Catalunya. Image: http://morbidanatomy.blogspot.com/

Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring :
Icones Embryonum Humanorum.
Frankfurt: Varrentrapp and Wenner, 1799. Image from: https://library.missouri.edu/exhibits/anatomy/images/soemmerring_plate.jpg
Icones Embryonum Humanorum. Frankfurt: Varrentrapp and Wenner, 1799. From Anatomical Illustration: Art informing Science: an online exhibit at University of Missouri Library.

Image of woodcut representing the four humoural temperaments. Woodcut by Johann Kaspar Lavater in Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe (1775-1778). Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Antique Folio Copper Plate published by J. Millan for Botanicum Medicinale, An Herbal of Medicinal Plants on the College of Physicians List, by Timothy Sheldrake 1759.

The Agnew Clinic depicts Dr. Agnew performing a partial mastectomy in a medical amphitheater. Thomas Eakins, oil on canvas, 1889, at John Morgan Building at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Painting by Rembrandt (1632). Currently housed in the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis (The Hague, Netherlands). Image from Wikimedia Commons.

A 19th century business card for a company that provided cupping and leeching services in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

On p. [1]: Advertisement for 'Anatomical and physiological description of the Florentine Venus', 2nd ed. Various editions of this work were published between 1847 and 1854. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Phrenology Diagram in the 'People's Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge' (1883). Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Dictionary gloss of 'phrenology', with accompanying illustrations, circa 1900.