Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Elisabeth Brander

  • Handmaidens of anatomy

    Elisabeth BranderSt. Louis, Missouri, United States Some of the most well-known images in the history of anatomy are the woodcut écorché figures that appear in Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica, published in 1543. Rather than lying inert on a dissection table, they stride boldly through a pastoral landscape as if still alive, showing their…

  • Bidloo and Ruysch: Anatomy and art in the 17th century Netherlands

    Elisabeth BranderSt. Louis, Missouri, United States Of the many distinguished anatomists who worked in the Netherlands during the European Enlightenment, Frederick Ruysch and Govard Bidloo were the two most remarkable. They were contemporaries and aware of each other’s work,1 but at first glance their aesthetic approaches to anatomy seem wildly different. Bidloo (1638-1731) produced an…