Month: November 2019
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Embalming
The practice of embalming the dead goes back at least to the ancient Egyptians, who wanted to ensure that they arrived in the afterworld in a presentable state as well as having their sarcophagi and pyramids provided with all the necessities required for that long journey. The page shown here is from The Champion Text…
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An interrupted dissection
The increasing interest in teaching anatomy by dissecting the human cadaver had a sordid side—the practice of body snatching, the illegal removal of corpses from graves, often by organized gangs of so-called resurrectionists. Body snatching was first recorded in Italy as early as the fourteenth century and as the centuries went on it became widespread…
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Pediatric nurse
A nurse checking on a playful child. Watercolour drawing by J.E. Sutcliffe, 1904. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0 Nurses are often the first point of contact for patients entering the medical system. They perform essential work, and often spend more time with patients then physicians do, ensuring treatment is performed and the body…
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The unity of nurses
The great white army. Published 1915 in Italy by unknown publisher. Donated by Michael Zwerdling. The National Library of Medicine. No known copyright restrictions This postcard, published in the midst of World War I in 1915, represents the unity of nurses across nations. In war time, many military nurses cared for wounded soldiers regardless…
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Nurse reading
A nurse is sitting at the bedside of a wounded man with a bandage over his eyes; she is reading him a letter. Photographic postcard, ca. 1930. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0 This Turkish postcard shows a nurse reading a letter to a wounded man. The nurse appears to smile, even as her…
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Lovis Corinth and the sick father
Franz Heinrich Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) began his career as a realistic painter, showing things on canvas as they are seen in reality. Thus in His Father on his Sickbed (Stadel Museum, Frankfurt) we see the father in bed, sick but perhaps not mortally so. His loving daughter keeps watch by the bedside. She has…
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Did Salvador Dali follow the prolactin discovery in his painting of the fountain of milk?
Michael Yafi Houston, Texas, United States Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Artists Rights Society © 2019 The Fountain of Milk Spreading Itself Uselessly on Three Shoes by Salvador Dali remains one of his most enigmatic works. It shows a nude woman on a pedestal, milk flowing from her breasts, while an emaciated man is…
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Gymnopédie
Mark Tan Northwest Deanery, UK First phrase of Gymnopédie. Erik Satie, 1888. Gymnopédie No. 1. Public domain Oblique et coupant l’ombre un torrent éclatant Ruisselait en flots d’or sur la dalle polie Où les atomes d’ambre au feu se miroitant Mêlaient leur sarabande à la gymnopédie [English translation]: Slanting and shadow-cutting a bursting stream…
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“Blood made White”: The relationship between blood and breastmilk in early modern England
Jennifer EvansSara ReadUnited Kingdom The early modern body was thought to be composed of and ordered by an intricate balance of fluids, the most important of which was blood. Blood was universally understood to have two origins: the heart and the liver. Together with the brain, these organs formed what Galen called “the noble organs.”…