\ 1 tr.i. 1 m

9/ ■'■$•'

■•'••'■'• i Dl ATOMY

mi

^iirtftli^

B£s==5£sC.V=^^:

lii Michael Sappol

U.S. Department ot" Health and Human Service!

National Institutes of Health

DREAM ANATOMY

Michael Sappol

In memoriam, Gretchen Worden (1947-2004),

who made us look and made us laugh.

This catalogue is produced in conjunction with Dream Anatomy, an

exhibition about anatomy and the artistic imagination, featuring material

from the collections ofthe National Library ofMedicine.

www.nlm.nih.gov/dreamanatomy

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

National Institutes of Health, National Library ofMedicine

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

& HUMAN SERVICES
U.S. GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL EDITION NOTICE

AUTHENTICATED

U.S. GOVERNMENT

INFORMATION

GPO

Use of ISBN

This is the Official U.S. Government edition of this publication and is herein identified to

certify its authenticity. Use of the 0-16 ISBN prefix is for U.S. Government Printing Office

Official Editions only. The Superintendent of Documents of the U.S. Government Printing Office

requests that any reprinted edition clearly be labeled as a copy of the authentic work with a

new ISBN.

Legal Status and Use of Seals and Logos

The logo of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) authenticates Dream

Anatomy, by Michael Sappol, as an official publication of the Department. It is prohibited to

use the DHHS logo on any republication of this book without the express, written permission

of the Department.

© All portions of this publication are protected against copying or other reproduction outside

of the United States in accordance with provisions of Article II of the Universal Copyright

Convention.

Catalogue Design: Riggs Ward Design, L.C, Richmond, VA

Cover Image:

Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) [anatomist]

Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) [artist]

Ontleding des menschelyken Hchaams Amsterdam, 1690. T. 71. Copperplate engraving

with etching. National Library of Medicine.

Back Cover Image:

Katherine Du Tiel (b. 1961) [artist]

Inside/Outside: Muscle/hand. San Francisco, 1994. Photograph: © Katherine Du Tiel.

National Library of Medicine.

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION

Sappol, Michael.

Dream anatomy/ Michael Sappol. -

Bethesda, Md.: U.S. Dept. of Health and Human

Services, National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine; Washington, D.C:

For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 2006.

(NIH publication; 05-5615)

Published in conjunction with the exhibition Dream Anatomy (Oct. 9, 2002 to

July 21, 2003), organized by the Exhibition Program of the History of Medicine

Division of the National Library of Medicine

1. Anatomy, Artistic -

history. 2. Exhibits -

catalogs. 3. History of Medicine. 4

Imagination. 5. Medical Illustration -

history. I. National Library of Medicine (U.S.).

History of Medicine Division. Exhibition Program. II. National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

www.nlm.nih.gov/dreamanatomy

WZ 28 N277S 2006

978-0-16-072473-2

0-16-072473-2

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov; Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800, DC area (202) 512-1800; Fax: (202) 512-2250

Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402-0001
TABLE OF CONTENTS

v Foreword

vii Preface

x About the National Library of Medicine

1 Dream Anatomies and the Great Divide: Art, Science, and the

Changing Conventions of Anatomical Representation, 1500-Present

3 Anatomy is us

11 Playing with death: Fun with science

25 Getting real: The new aesthetics of scientific illustration

61 Our cadavers, ourselves, or the return of the anatomical repressed

77 Notes

79 Revisiting Dream Anatomy

81 Anatomical dream time: The early modern era

115 Getting real: Removing metaphor and fancy from anatomy

133 Visionary and visible: Dreaming anatomy in modernity

161 History of Anatomy Timeline

162 Print Technologies of Anatomical Illustration

169 Exhibition Checklist

177 Further Reading

179 Credits and Acknowledgements
:/i*7f.

. V V*.,J<„ Ju.i/ /<«/,
FOREWORD

The National Library of Medicine has been described as the jewel

in the crown of the U. S. Public Health Service. If that is so, then

the Library's historical collections are the setting for that jewel.

The National Library of Medicine traces its founding to

1836, but it was not until 1865, when Army surgeon John Shaw

Billings took over the collection, that the Library began its rise in

the estimation of the world medical community. When Billings

retired, in 1896, the "national medical library," as it was frequently

called, was the largest such institution in the world. Because

Billings was also an avid collector of historical books,journals, and

manuscripts, the National Library of Medicine today has a fine

collection oforiginal materials chronicling the healing professions

as far back as the eleventh century.

From October 9, 2002 to July 31, 2003, the Library's

"Dream Anatomy" exhibition was a popular destination for visiting

historians, librarians, health professionals, students, and the public.

It piqued the interest ofwriters andjournalists around the country,

and was the subject of many articles and illustrated features.

The present volume captures the flavor ofthe exhibition.

It handsomely reproduces many of the images, most from the

Library's historical collections, others borrowed for the occasion.

The reader will also find an informative and insightful essay, and

the original exhibition text, by Michael Sappol, the exhibition

curator and author ofthis book.

Dream Anatomy is the first collaboration of the National

Library of Medicine and the U.S. Government Printing Office

in the publication of a catalog based on an exhibition. I hope the

peruser ofthis volume will agree with me that the partnership has

been successful.

1. William Cowper (1666-1709)

[anatomist]. Gerard de Lairesse

(1640-1711) [artist]. Michiel van der

Gucht (1660-1725) [engraver]. The

anatomy of humane bodies (after Govard

Bidloo, Anatomia, 1685). London, 1698.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D, Director

National Library of Medicine

DREAM ANATOMY
Znatomfe alterBcynctfybcr bed mcnfd>t:

'*********

\*t

0$&*<£«&*%'?*

OsAAmioty.

ft/not ■hmna-r

***>?,

Gp&le.

■*$&*

'*&$&

AP

«/'

&jy **)

^%

*%
PREFACE

Dream Anatomy is derived from an exhibition of the same name,

held at the National Library of Medicine from October 2002 to

July 2003. The curator, Michael Sappol, had long wanted to use

the Library's extraordinary collection of historical anatomical

works as the basis of an exhibition. A hiatus in the Library's regu

lar exhibition schedule allowed him and exhibition coordinator

Elizabeth Mullen, along with other members of the exhibition

program team, to develop—

in considerable haste—an exhibition

on the history of anatomical representation, using materials from

the Library's rich collections. As soon as Dream Anatomy opened, it

was evident that it had struck a chord with the public. Visitors, the

press, and professional journals were warmly appreciative. After

the close of the physical exhibition, the Dream Anatomy web site

www.nlm.nih.gov/dreamanatomy has continued to attract visi

tors, more than 2,000,000 at last count.

Because of the short lead time for the exhibition, it was

impossible to prepare an exhibition catalog at the time. When

visitors asked how they could obtain a book version of Dream

Anatomy, we had to tell them there wasn't one, but that we hoped

to have something in the future. Now, that future has arrived.

This history explains some unusual aspects of this Dream

Anatomy book. Unlike most exhibition catalogs, it comes well

after the close of the exhibition. For curator Michael Sappol,

a cultural historian of anatomy, the time lag provided a chance

for reflection. The making of an exhibition is always a

learning

process. At the end of Dream Anatomy's run, after many fruitful

discussions with visitors and colleagues, Sappol had developed a

deeper understanding of the history of anatomical representation.

2. Hans von Gersdorff. Feldtbuch der

Wundartzney: newlich getruckt und gebessert.

Strasbourg: 1528. Wood engraving. National

Library of Medicine.

DREAM ANATOMY
We decided therefore to create a book that fulfills two functions.

First, it presents a revised and enriched version of the exhibition

gallery, adding some images not included in the original exhibi

tion but which serve to highlight its major themes. Second, the

accompanying text contains an original scholarly interpretation

of the history of anatomical representation, enhanced by Sappol's

latest thoughts on the subject.

The usual format for an exhibition catalog is to pair an

interpretive essay with a

"gallery" section. This book retains that

dual structure, but we have elected to profusely illustrate the essay,

so that it functions as a guide to and reflection of the themes of

the exhibition. We know that some readers will opt to read the

text ofthe book, but that others will treat it essentially as a picture

collection. We hope that the numerous illustrations accompanying

the essay will entice this second group to attend to the text and to

reflect on the changing history of anatomical representation.

Dream Anatomy the book, like the exhibition, is for

everyone: middle and high school students, medical profession

als, artists, art lovers, bibliophiles, students in the humanities, and

casual readers. Our goal is to reach scholars and non-scholars. The

essay deals with serious issues, but is intended to be pleasurable

and accessible.

Such an approach, in fact, mirrors what 16th- and 17thcentury anatomical texts themselves did. As Andreas Vesalius, the

first great modern anatomist, argued, you can't just say it, you have

to show it. At the same time, in printed works and public dis

sections, Vesalius and his successors infused the study of anatomy

with pleasure: first and foremost, the pleasure oflooking.
The dual structure ofthe book reinforces the idea of dou

bling that runs throughout the exhibition. The anatomical body

is a body double—

the essay calls it a "mirror" that first anatomists,

and later a

larger public, peered into. Anatomical illustration and

display required collaboration between art and science, and even

tually became the terrain on which art and science were defined

in opposition to each other. Dream Anatomy invites you to look

and think twice about the anatomical body and its relation to

self. The appeal ofthe topic—

anatomy, anatomical representation,

the anatomical conception of self, whether treated historically,

aesthetically, or scientifically—

is evidenced by the wave of ana

tomical exhibitions that currently attract record-setting crowds, the

popularity of anatomically-themed art, and the numerous scenes

of anatomical dissection which now appear in movies and on TV.

The history of anatomy, Dream Anatomy argues, is everybody's

history: we all think of ourselves as anatomical beings.

Elizabeth Fee, Ph.D., Chief History ofMedicine Division

National Library of Medicine

DREAM ANATOMY
ABOUT THE NATIONAL LIBRARY

OF MEDICINE

The National Library of Medicine is the world's largest medi

cal library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, on the campus of

the National Institutes of Health, the Library plays a major role

in medical research, scholarship and the provision of medical

information to the public and the health professions. Its collection

includes more than seven million items—

booksjournals, technical

reports, manuscripts, photographs, prints, films and ephemera.

Housed within the Library is one of the world's finest collec

tions of historical materials on health and disease, and the health

sciences. The Library's History of Medicine Division has early

manuscripts from the eleventh century on, more than 500 books

printed before 1501, and more than 70,000 printed before 1801.

It has a rich collection of prints, photographs, medical and health

ABOUT THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE
films (from the silent era to the present), and modern manuscripts

(1601 to the present), including the papers ofmany important sci

entists and leaders in the fields of biomedicine and pubHc health.

The Library also features exhibitions on medical and health topics,

and hosts a variety of websites.

The Dream Anatomy exhibition opened at the Library on

October 9, 2002 and ran until July 31, 2003. Many of the images

featured in the exhibition, and in this catalogue, can be found on

the World Wide Web at the foUowing sites:

Dream Anatomy

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/dreamanatomy

Historical Anatomies on the Web

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies

Turning the Pages

http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/intro.htm

Images In the History of Medicine

http://wwwihm.nlm.nih.gov

Anatquest (Visible Human Project images)

http://anatquest.nlm.nih.gov

Other Library websites can be found by going to:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov

DREAM ANATOMY
w

in

C*fl

-
DREAM ANATOMIES AND THE GREAT DIVIDE

ART, SCIENCE, AND THE CHANGING CONVENTIONS OF ANATOMICAL REPRESENTATION, 1500 TO THE PRESENT
zs° DE DISSECT. PARTIVM

&<.,
ANATOMY IS US

. . . Let me be

Thy cut anatomie,

And in each mangled part

My heart you 'I see.

—

Richard Lovelace, 1659

This essay is about a set of longstanding issues in the history of

anatomical representation. It is about the conventions that govern

the coUaboration between artists and anatomists, the setting of

boundaries between art and anatomical science, the dialogue

between artist and anatomist. And it is about how such matters

affect, and even shape, our own conceptions of self, our ideas

about what it means to be a

person, our beliefs about who and

what we are. The early illustrated anatomical treatises of the six

teenth and seventeenth centuries—

the works ofJohann Dryander,

Charles Estienne, and even Andreas Vesalius s

revolutionary 1543

De humani corporisfabrica—featured a rich ensemble of imaginary

figurations and artistic embeUishments, with much morbid humor,

and literary and religious allusion. Sometime between then and

now, something happened to anatomy. Nowadays scientific

anatomies stick to a

straight and narrow path: they don't allow

for any deviations, any correspondences between the anatomical

body and the moral world, the political world, the social world.

They don't aUow for any fun, don't permit, or acknowledge, the

pleasures of anatomy.

All of this matters because it's personal. Anatomy is our

inner reality. Anatomy is us. Even if we haven't formally studied

it, even if we don't know all the details, we carry around with

us an anatomical image of self, a pocket map that divides us into

3. Charles Estienne (ca. 1504-1564)

[author]. Etienne de la Riviere (d. 1569)

[anatomist]. De dissectione partium

corporis humani.... Paris, 1545. Page 250.

Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

Max Ernst and other 20th-century surreal

ists adopted Estienne's anatomical figures

and their imaginary settings as icons of the

alienated dream self and a forerunner of

the new aesthetics of grotesquerie.

^^

HV««IC«PIT1 riOVR* VNDCCIMA.

4. Johannes Eichmann (also known as

Dryander; 1500-1560) and Mondino dei

Luzzi (d. 1326) [anatomists]. Anatomia

Mundini, ad vetustissimorum . . . . Marburg,

1541. Humani Capitis, Figura Undecima.

Woodcut. National Library of Medicine

DREAM ANATOMY
I!lll, miw^imii ■win -

jm nm hiiiiii -miw

r

1 ;

Id

Hi

H..

3

<

•1

3

\r

i

T

1 .

/ / I. I

J

P'

1

[

P

r

t

:'i

i
5. Bartolomeo Eustachi (d. 1574) [anatomist]. Giulio de' Musi (fl. 1535-1553) [artist].

Romanae archetypae tabulae anatomicae novis.... Rome, 1783. Tab. XXXIX. Colored

copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

A skeleton jauntily turns its back on the reader. Its pelvis, fused to the top of a columnar

pedestal, metaphorically suggests the structural function of hips and legs. The giant

eyeballs and colorization are 18th-century additions.

6. John Browne (1642-ca. 1702) [anatomist]. Myographia nova.... Leiden, 1687.

Frontispiece. Copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Periwigged anatomist John Browne presides over a fanciful iconographic overview. Figures

representing art, science, life, death, spirit, and matter all harmoniously take pleasure in

the anatomical enterprise.

DREAM ANATOMY
7. Paul Almasy [photographer]. Machines of

Modern Medicine. Photograph. World Health

Organization. National Library of Medicine.

8. Bartolomeo Eustachi (d. 1574)

[anatomist]. Giulio de' Musi (fl. 1535-

1553) [artist]. Romanae archetypae

tabulae anatomicae novis.... Rome, 1783.

Titlepage. Copperplate engraving. National

Library of Medicine.

A modern anatomist performs a dissection

before figures that represent classical

learning. In the foreground, dogs fight over

the scraps.

9. Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-1669)

[artist]. Tabulae anatomicae. .. . Rome,

1741. Tab. XVI. Copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

A dissected man gazes on a picture of a

dissection of the back of his head, a playful

reference to anatomical self-consciousness.

Dissections of the cranium and brain, visual

quotations from Vesalius, float in the air

and on the pediment.

regions and territories, with internal place names and borders

and topographical features. And this anatomical self-image has a

history—

which is the history of anatomical representation—

a

long history of coUaboration and negotiation between anatomists,

artists, engravers, patrons, printers, and readers. Until the invention

of X-ray imaging, sonograms, CT scans, MRIs, and the like, the

only way to see into ourselves was through the dissection of dead

human beings. The dissected cadaver was our mirror.

Early modern anatomists peered into that mirror—

and

made faces. A spirit ofplay pervaded the anatomy ofVesalius, and

his predecessors and successors. They earnestly investigated our

structure, tried to accurately describe and represent the body, but

they also sought to entertain, morally instruct, and amaze students

and colleagues and patrons and themselves, with a

captivating

charm. They were a

feisty bunch, constantly challenging and insult

ing each other, trying to outdo each other with flashier dissections,

and bigger, more expensive picture books, filled with more beau

tiful and artful and witty illustrations. In the pages of their books

and in museum displays, anatomists were puppeteers who made

their cadavers dance and pose. Anatomists dissected their cadavers

and delivered their lectures in the pit ofthe anatomical theater, for

audiences that included the local aristocracy, magistrates, and the

clergy, as well as medical students and colleagues. The anatomist

was a performer. Anatomy required showmanship.

ANATOMY IS US
TAB. XVI

■'\;
TAB. XX

10. Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-1669) [artist]. Tabulae anatomicae novis....

Rome, 1783. Tab. XX. Copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Berrettini's exuberant figures partake of the theatricalism of baroque drama, dance, and

court entertainments.

ll. Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) [anatomist]. Rosamond Purcell (b. 1942)

[photographer]. Jar containing hand grasping the rim of an eyesocket, from the collection

of B. S. Albinus (1697-1770). Leiden, early 1700s. Anatomical specimen. Boerhaave

Museum, Leiden. Photograph, 1991. National Library of Medicine.

The specimens of early modern anatomists like Ruysch and Albinus typically feature

bizarre juxtapositions and were designed more to astonish and entertain than to instruct.

ANATOMY IS US
JL

PLAYING WITH DEATH

FUN WITH SCIENCE

Our pictures. . . will give particular pleasure to those who do not

have the opportunity of dissecting a human body or who... although

fascinated and delighted by the study of man..., yet cannot bring

themselves to ever attend a dissection.

—

Andreas VesaHus, 1543

The anatomical revolution associated with Vesalius produced

knowledge about the body through the medical appropriation

and study of the dead. Anatomy was a dark science. It acquired

its mystique from its wiUful transgressions of funerary custom,

its incursions across the boundary that separates life and death.

Anatomists took—

often stole—

dead bodies, cut them open,

puUed them to pieces, read them aloud, encrypted them into

a

terminology of Greek and Latin, a shared secret.

x Dissection

became the preeminent ritual that inducted young men into the

fraternity of medical knowledge. Medicine became something of

a death cult.

12. John Browne (1642-ca. 1702)

[anatomist]. A compleat treatise of the

muscles, as they appear in the humane

body, and arise in dissection.... London,

1681. Tab. XIII. Copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

13. Mansur ibn llyas (fl. ca. 1390) [author].

Tashrih-i badan-i insan. Iran, ca. 1488. MS

P18, folio 18A. Manuscript illustration.

National Library of Medicine.

The crudely schematic illustrations in this

rare Persian manuscript are not keyed

to the text and it is unlikely that the

artist actually ever witnessed a human

dissection.

14. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

[anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani

corporis fabrica.... Basel, 1543. Page 472.

Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

De fabrica, the foundational text of modern

anatomy, was written in Latin, the language

of elite learning. Only a small group of

scholars and gentlemen had the education

and resources to gain access to the book.

**• <*e*"*trff*iitKrp&mmmmtmcoln4ml*mt,.A,*pn*fimnTp.Jamm

rltrrpori,ji*t*t*i

VJGESIMASECVNDA QVINTI LIBRI FIGVXA

DREAM ANATOMY
12

15. Giulio Casserio (ca. 1552-1616)

[anatomist]. Odoardo Fialetti (1573-

1638) [artist]. Tabulae anatomicae. .. .

Venice, 1627. Lib. IV, Tab. VI. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Early modern anatomical figures put on

a danse macabre in which the dead mock

the contrived gestures of the living.

Scientific anatomy, of course, was more than just dissec

tion: it translated views of the body's interior from the dissecting

table to the pages of a book, and back again to the dissecting table.

Visual representation was one of the key innovations of the new

science of anatomy. Ancient and medieval anatomical treatises

consisted largely or entirely of written descriptions of the body;

iUustrations were rare (and, when they did supplement the text,

crude and schematic). After Vesalius, the authoritative anatomical

treatise had to be illustrated, had to have richly detailed and inten

sively captioned pictures of the dissected body and body parts.

You couldn't just describe the complexity of the interior of the

body, you had to show it.

And what was shown was the dead body. Early modern

representations of the anatomical body took death head-on: the

dead mocked the living; the living mocked the dead. The cadaver

was an effigy of social types: the courtier, the flirt, the harlequin,

the fecund woman, the heathen warrior. At the same time, the

cadaver was Death, with a capital D. It served as a reminder of our

mortality, our fallibility, our folly—

the fragility of human life and

civilization. Anatomy cited or parodied or augmented long-estab

lished iconic traditions and subjects—

natural wonders, the classical

ideal, memento mori, heraldry, danse macabre, Christian and classical

martyrology—

and newer genres such as still life, 'which featured

human mortality as one ofits tropes. Early modern anatomists and

their artist collaborators made their work their pleasure and their

pleasure their work. But it was morbid play, death play.

It was also a

great deal of work—

especiaUy after Vesalius

transformed the study of anatomy in the 1530s and '40s. Vesalius

took unprecedented care in getting it right. He studied Galen, the

great anatomist of antiquity, "who for over a thousand years was

considered the greatest authority on human anatomy. But unlike

Galen, who only dissected animals, Vesalius dissected human

PLAYING WITH DEATH
ANDREAE VESALII BRYXELLENSIS

DB DPODBCIM srPERIORIS M^XIL

PRIMA NONI CAPITIS FIGVRAdanam r/t ccnrmftfiuK- /Jiffmr*.Htmm* <ww* cthttn* tjntaimfUtmumtfGtkmifi

ftriortimaxtBfactum itfrripite, lewtorl ■^o.-io tfumJsiatttiijptM*- . Pi ttrrrijaMutf

rMMf<&Jjtta*i4p^rat>fMtwr*«^^KJfahca,ftc3*TT*ti*J*MmucA*ri'im

occiput ifmi, ©- Mttnoriftdrjkprr .-jWXjjbft^i oporfatt . Prtfcmh mttmjipir* eho,

rtfttrwt ia&ctm a*J^^um,mmJ^fc^Grttcorum,mjxllUfiiprria'l)opU,(^*Jrt

igrm^t rrma^primimadhbtmttfr: rtbfdtjyftm fjlitmi erfatmru, wJortfrrt,<*nri mi nm

m^fmr».C^rramiarfi^^^ci^MT^i<^fwJr9Afonsmmii.c<iflrUiftiiimae,^u^'

rrrtlrtllUjJi.,ip*hl<&,4*tt>f^m;TcfauUmmr.Sm*JBhtk^^

II F^iKuoi-IiUmipoMrwrmanhTaifcJiimt^4mfnmiiaJ^ifartaKnaav

TtMecJorwfalmMTCgtatcM inmpmit.

K I/trticUo.jmtShwm. L SMjkrittmporUot.

M MmmtBauf*oct$vjimflrr&ttdM'wpract0Mp)m* nfj» imMttiai pcctrrit.

>V CwHrlfrwc ot,mJmtfHttmfarvetito^mintri»akjtie Ntofowwr. InfluJtrt <mtm

ociIifeikGg'HrtfmMtim-jdcm&mJtcimii fHtrnfHMiBtekmatrtikiiuifttlitfin

mmma^m^^tftnkdrMtrjm)ftTmJM.^4b^,Nfm^frpi*it^

hreru <&m<m. *xmiamtiffmtt ofiU pmlcwkm.v 4cmfmmvmtd<uJfm*:Tk*t *oiUa

T T HatctJ^i^mimm^lUfmprnorOmmrrtiatwr^Tmi^Uf^p^JmiMtopipsr

A bfiif*oeri'rJc bw**pf»ra,fipcr*mwvxfcfcam&towJicaiu4toJtcrmm*tiir

f**v&&GhKnipox^mCm:htmmtmm^*mUtt&qwtriaw&>rttiX,I<',i.

13

16-17 Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) [anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani corporis fabrics.... Basel, 1543. Woodcut.

National Library of Medicine.

De fabrica's illustrations are keyed to alphabetical captions and commentary. The

integration of image and text was a revolutionary innovation.

In the image on the right, a human skull sits atop that of a dog's skull, signifying that

Galen mistakenly based his descriptions of human anatomy on his dissections of dogs

and other animals.

DREAM ANATOMY
DVARVM FIGV-;

modi frt'fcqueatilwt Gaptttbu

tvaimaiui rcnfrntur,«btr*, on*

dcxmmUtutpropontt tntegrtct

TthrlaccerehclU,ct difi*mprto

rifigvradoTpifcmtdMlLtpimtt,

dura infrrlm rtmiijs h*c oimua

tnnefllittbui memtsrjitli, nuffmm

apparentihmi.t^fdb<rcpnrfmfi

gura nudamfrptem cerebrtner'

uorvmparlBferltm (ndextratitn

turn latrre conmonffrat . <ptan *

tpam<y utinecejjumfitft^ienfi-'

uormtdamjertcm etumtnfi

latere hie dtttn&wcrtimu .

'{f»rrr buiusproportion)tade

ptSaefliMonituitiitJn Qua cors

put etrcvrnjeriberei , nrrtw ttfic*

taiioSma prafeatti figwr* fide

cmtjiflcrel j cr Print thorax cf

abdoKtu ex amrriorip&rtt«*-

(pteemtur^ltsacro ueifitfi

iiflrwm kmcrum comtrfa prof

fm a dextro Idterejpc

nlffraU

Flcvra

- %

■

14

18-20. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

[anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani

corporis fabrica.... Basel, 1543. Woodcut.

National Library of Medicine.

Left, a skeleton digs its own grave.

bodies, and made a detailed study of his dissections. When he

compared his observations to what Galen had written, the wisdom

ofthe ages was in many instances overthrown.Vesalius wrote about

the errors of Galen's ways. But he also made sure to depict them.

The clincher was the illustration. Some were done in a highly

finished naturalistic manner: here is the real body, they seem to say.

Others, while taking care to be accurate, are less naturalistic. But

naturalistic or not, there is much contrivance. Images with non

existent muscles make the point that Galen mistakenly described

nonexistent anatomical structures. A human skuU sits atop a dog's

skuU to signify that Galen erred because his knowledge ofanatomy

was obtained from the dissection of dogs and other animals, not

PLAYING WITH DEATH
^g ANDREAE VESALll BRVXELLENSIS

DECIMA

Qjr A R.TA

MVSCVLO'

R V M TA<

BVLA,
21. Giulio Casserio (ca. 1552-1616)

[anatomist]. Odoardo Fialetti (1573-

1638) [artist]. In Adriaan van Spiegel

(1578-1625), De formato foetu....

Padua, 1626. Tab. MM. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

A pregnant woman is dissected so that

the flaps resemble petals of a flower,

with the baby at the center.

16

PLAYING WITH DEATH
people. Still other illustrations combine naturalism with symbolic

elements, serve as reminders of mortality, use anatomy to wittily

iUustrate common sayings, playfully enact visual metaphor, or set

the cadavers in poses that dramatize their classical proportions or

monstrosity. Neither Vesalius nor his artists could conceive of, or

desire, a work governed entirely by austere naturalism. Quite the

contrary, they wanted to entertain their readers and themselves.

They responded to a pervasive cultural expectation that governed

printed images in early modern Europe: the illustration should be,

in some way, delightful, and should tell a

story. So when Vesalius

entered the scene, things got more scientific, but also wittier and

more theatrical.

Between 1550 and 1700, anatomists and their illustrators

took this cultural logic to new extremes: anatomy entered the

Baroque. In this period, forms of theater, dance, and literature

22. Ame Bourdon (ca. 1636-1706)

[author]. Daniel Le Bossu (fl. 1671-1678)

[engraver]. Nouvelles tables anatomiques.

Paris, 1678. Table 8. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

23. John Browne (1642-ca. 1702)

[anatomist]. Myographia nova.... Leiden,

1687. Tab. XIII. Copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

17

DREAM ANATOMY
Tauola. I. del Lib. 1 1. 64

\
emerged that are recognizably modern: the ballet and opera, and

aU kinds of court entertainments. This was the era of Shake

speare, Montaigne, Moliere, Donne, and Cervantes. It was a time

in which great courts and salons and circles emerged, places where

people vied to outdo each other, with manners and repartee and

fashion and learning. And it was a time in which people began to

perform, and develop, the idea ofunique individuality and person

ality that literary historian Stephen Greenblatt calls "Renaissance

self-fashioning." 2

In their dissections, written works and book illustrations,

early modern anatomists fashioned themselves, and modeled the

fashioned self, in all its variety. The producers and audience for

anatomical representation expected, even demanded, that ana

tomical illustration represent the human body moraUy, socially,

theologically, theatricaUy, balleticaUy, literarily, eroticaUy as weU

as scientificaUy. Anatomists and their artists taught the moral and

scientific truth of the human body, and fooled around for no

reason other than to have fun. Early modern anatomical iUustrations and objects operated in multiple dimensions of meaning,

and served multiple functions. The anatomist studied dissected

cadavers, and enjoyed manipulating and presenting them; readers

and viewers studied dissected cadavers, and enjoyed looking. And

this convergence of work and play, this multiplicity of function

and meaning, was not problematic.3

24. Juan Valverde de Amusco (ca. 1525-

ca. 1588) [anatomist]. Gaspar Becerra

(1520?-1568?) [artist]. Anatomia del

corpo humano.... Rome, 1559. Page 64.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

A flayed cadaver holds his skin in

one hand and a dissecting knife in

the other. The skin's distorted face

has the appearance of a ghost or a

cloud, suggesting that spirit has been

separated from, or peeled off of, the

fleshy inner man.

25. Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-

1669) [artist]. Tabulae anatomicae....

Rome, 1741. Book open to page 38.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

19

DREAM ANATOMY
t-
21

26. Bartolomeo Eustachi (d. 1574) [anatomist]. Giulio de' Musi (fl. 1535-1553) [artist].

Romanae archetypae tabulae anatomicae novis.... Rome, 1783. Tab. XXX. Colored copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

27. Giulio Casserio (ca. 1552-1616) [anatomist]. Odoardo Fialetti (1573-1638) [artist]. Tabulae

Anatomicae.... Venice, 1627. Tab. XVI. Copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Next page

28 Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) [anatomist]. Alle de ontleed-genees-en heelkmdige werken...

Vol. 3. Amsterdam, 1744. Page 568. Etching with copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Ruysch's morbidly whimsical "repository of curiosities" included displays of infant and fetal

skeletons, placed in landscapes of human and animal body parts.

29 Juan Valverde de Amusco (1525-ca. 1588) [anatomist]. Gaspar Becerra (15207-1568?)

[artist]. Anatomia del corpo humane... Rome, 1559. Page 95. Copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

Viscera dissected not just through skin, but through a suit of Roman armor. The free-floating

body parts on the right are copied from Vesalius.

DREAM ANATOMY
*'«•-*. Tof- a3 ,iJ rivunJA
Tauola.II. del Lib. III. <?y
r. 2.
GETTING REAL

THE NEW AESTHETICS OF SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATION

Anatomicalfigures are made in two very different ways; one

is the simple portrait, in which the object is reproduced exactly

as it was seen; the other is a

representation of the object under

such circumstances as were not actually seen, but conceived in

the imagination [T]hefirst. . . carries the mark of truth,

and becomes almost as infallible as the object itself.

—William Hunter, 1774

Then it aU changed. Between 1680 and 1800, the conventions,

meanings, audience, and uses of anatomical representation shifted.

Anatomists began to develop new criteria for what constituted

acceptable scientific iUustration. Play and the pursuit of truth

became incompatible. The cadaver was no longer made to pose

and dance. The artist was no longer asked or permitted to embel

lish the background, to provide fantasy architecture and landscapes

for the anatomical figures to frolic in. The reader was no longer

asked to meditate on human mortality. The high spirits and intoxi

cated humor of anatomical representation were no longer wanted.

The structure of the body, in aU its particularity and specificity,

took up the entirety ofrepresentational space. Science, anatomists

argued, needed to focus. Suddenly a boundary separated art and

science—a rift that ran right through death and the dead body.

Art and science came to be defined in mutuaUy exclusive ways.

That separation stiU has force today.

i-i + ~f „rU^]* An>th Tn ik Amsterdam, 1690. T. 21. Copperplate

The boundary did not come out of whole cloth. In its

engravjng wjth etchlng National Library

origin it was only a potential in early scientific discourse, an unre- of Medicine.

alized plank in an unrealized program. In the sixteenth century,

natural magic and natural phUosophy were aUies, but a century

later that aUiance feU apart. Like other seventeenth-century natural

30. Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) [anatomist].

Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) [artist].

Ontledingdes menschelyken lichaams....

DREAM ANATOMY
26

31. Edward Scriven (1775-1841) [artist].

Francis Lord Bacon. Copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

32. Govard Bidloo (1649-1713)

[anatomist]. Gerard de Lairesse (1640-

1711) [artist]. Ontleding des menschelyken

lichaams.... Amsterdam, 1690. T. 14.

Copperplate engraving with etching.

National Library of Medicine.

The detailed depiction of the mutilation

that dissection causes, along with the

nails and pins that serve as prosthetic

aids to anatomical study, demonstrate

the unsparing realism of the new style

of illustration initiated by Bidloo in

collaboration with De Lairesse.

philosophers, Francis Bacon engaged in polemics against the belief

that similarities between things are causative or meaningful—one

of the tenets of natural magic. Magic was condemned as supersti

tion. This condemnation was a big net and representational art

got caught: its stock and trade was aUegory and metaphor. In The

Great Instauration (1620), Bacon hoped to foster the emergence of

a class of men "who aspire not to guess and divine, but to discover

and know, who propose not to devise mimic and fabulous worlds

of their own...." These seekers after truth, Bacon argued, would

"examine and dissect the nature ofthis very world itself" and "go

to facts themselves for everything." Bacon invoked anatomy as an

exemplary science, a method of systematic observation and dis

covery that went beneath the surface of things and discerned the

parts of alarger natural order that could only be known through

detailed, piecemeal exploration. Not surprisingly then, Bacon

deployed an anatomical trope ("examine and dissect the nature

of this very world") in a polemic partly directed against the use

of tropes in science.4 More than four decades later, in his History

of the Royal Society, Thomas Sprat defined scientific discourse in

opposition to a metaphor-laden rhetoric and fancy phraseology:

Who can behold, without indignation, how many mists

and uncertainties,...specious Tropes and Figures have

brought on our Knowledg[e]?..., this vicious abundance

of Phrase, this trick of Metaphors, this volubility of

Tongue. . . .[T]he only Remedy, that can be found for this

extravagance ...[is] to reject aU the amplifications, digres

sions, and sweUings ofstyle: to return back to the primitive

purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so many things,

almost in an equal number of words.5

Even so, in the 1660s, in both pictures and text, learned anato

mies were fuU of "metaphors", "amplifications", "digressions" and

"sweUings ofstyle."

GETTING REAL
r
28

33. Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) [anatomist].

Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) [artist].

Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams. . . .

Amsterdam, 1690. Frontispiece portrait of

Bidloo. Copperplate engraving with etching.

National Library of Medicine.

34. Govard Bidloo (1649-1713)

[anatomist]. Gerard de Lairesse (1640-

1711) [artist]. Ontleding des menschelyken

lichaams.... Amsterdam, 1690. T. 70.

Copperplate engraving with etching.

National Library of Medicine.

35. William Hunter (1718-1783)

[anatomist]. Jan van Riemsdyk (fl. 1750-

1788) [artist]. The anatomy of the human

gravid uterus. Birmingham, 1774. Tab. VI.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Over the next hundred and fifty years, those niceties

were expunged from anatomical discourse and iUustration. The

key text in the new anatomical realism was Govard Bidloo s 1685

Anatomia humani corporis, with illustrations by artist Gerard de

Lairesse. Although Bidloo included a

smirking skeleton holding

an hourglass and artfuUy arranged anatomical stiU lives, he also

featured images unlike any that had ever been printed. Dissected

bodies and body parts are rendered in harshly realistic detail. The

viewer is spared nothing: we see the raggedness of the flesh and

the prosthetics ofdissection (pins, hoists, ropes, the dissecting table)

and mutilated faces. The overaU effect is at the same time ugly

and beautiful—Lairesse's iUustrations, finely engraved by Abraham

Blooteling and Pieter van Gunst, are absolute masterpieces of

composition and texture—

a disturbing nightmare anatomy. Later,

WiUiam Hunter (with artistJan van Riemsdyk) and Albrecht von

HaUer (with artist C. J. RoUinus) consolidated the new style and

theorized it. They entirely excised death figures, symbols and

grace notes. Like Bidloo, they concentrated on the particulars of a

single, specific dissection of the body or body part

—

and tried to

show it as the artist and anatomist saw it—

there are no composites,

no artistic embeUishments. The new anatomy had a relentless gaze

that seemed almost to terrorize its subjects and its viewers. There

was also a

technological coroUary: the imperative to render precise

views of the body made anatomists more reliant on technicaUy

masterful draftsmanship and sophisticated printing techniques

such as etching and copperplate engraving which permitted more

detaUed representation. The drawings of RoUinus, Riemsdyk and

Lairesse have an almost photographic quality, which suggests that

they may have employed (or been influenced by) the camera

obscura. Technological innovation and technical mastery encour

aged the new hyper-realistic style, and vice versa.

GETTING REAL
-.

•

r ■ ■■ . «- ■•..---

•

■'i •

'

, .- yv

*""

,/c </'/</< < 'iito. ft <i<//nin/t/t
30

C*9tym.e&.SK&l.-£. ast.&c-^ c~, %uc~% cf. cM: &*,*& <-n~.w*. i, a*»

GETTING REAL
• .D cm jt~o ir7~ rtcri-J - '~tt k-i-

>■ /t£-/ (re t</ct'/ /*/X*—*f*'; ''*■■ "*'--■

.',«> /f/ nt ;■-■?"* £""■ t. em<'.

<" .

'

; •/

' '

S -'

ty far, ■ /-, Sr. >■/, '7.^>r,S-/rt-

/•j ,v

■

.

—

, / /

A c>, < t

/v u«/ /£<• ■ ,-v/-. ..1. /« .<;>

36 Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777) [anatomist]. C J. RoUinus [artist], /cones anatomicae.

Vol. 2. Gdttingen, 1756. Fascicle II, Lectori S, Figurae I and II. Copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

37 Author/artist unknown. Anatomical and physiognomic study, Netherlands, ca. 1790.

Manuscript. Pen and ink, with watercolor. National Library of Medicine.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, doctors and students often made paintings and drawings

of their dissections, or copies from book illustrations, for private study. Such artwork was

regarded as a form of intensive study.

DREAM ANATOMY
32

38. William Cheselden (1688-1752) [author]. Gerard Van der Gucht (1696-1776) [artist].

Osteographia. London, 1733. Titlepage. Copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

An artist using a camera obscura to make a drawing of a specimen. The light going through

the pinhole at the back of the camera will project an inverted scene (the specimen is hung

upside down to compensate).

GETTING REAL
In thinking about realism, a term that was only coined

in the early nineteenth century, art historians teU us: be careful.

The goal of realism is to maintain an almost airtight correspon

dence between the visual representation and the subject of the

representation, which often leads to the conflation of object with

its representation. For example, talking about the material world,

we sometimes point to a realistic drawing or photograph of a

dissected body or some other object, and say something to the

effect that "this is what is real"—even though the photograph

or drawing is just an image, not the thing itself. To guard against

this slippage, we need to remind ourselves that realism is a mode

of visual representation that has particular characteristics, and

technologies, and a particular history. Realistic images featured:

abundant and extraneous detail; specificity ofsubject, place, time;

the possibility of ugliness, accident, disorder; meticulously ren

dered textures, shadows, reflections, sometimes verging on trompe

I'oeil; a

ramped-up commitment to iUusionistic perspective; and,

above aU, the intention of documenting what the eye sees (even

39. Govard Bidloo (1649-1713)

if the scene is a contrived arrangement of objects, as in stiU life). [anatomist]. Gerard de Lairesse (1640-

1711) [artist]. Ontleding des menschelyken

Realism excluded: invention, metaphor, aUusion, humor, schematic uchaams.... Amsterdam, 1690. 1 82.

Copperplate engraving with etching.

simplification, composite idealism. Realism was no fun. National Library of Medicine.

Or rather a different order of fun. If the pleasures of wit,

low comedy, dance, and aUegory were no longer permitted in ana

tomical representation—

if anatomy had to be serious or neutral

in its public display—

pleasure could never be entirely excluded.

Instead it covertly lingered, even gained force, but only in certain

unacknowledged and perverse registers: The pleasure of mastery

33

DREAM ANATOMY
34

40. Govard Bidloo (1649-1713)

[anatomist]. GeTard de Lairesse (1640-

1711) [artist]. Ontleding des menschelyken

lichaams.... Amsterdam, 1690. T. 30.

Copperplate engraving with etching.

National Library of Medicine.

The cord around the wrists and rope around

the neck are here used to help position

the cadaver for the convenience of the

anatomist and artist.

over death and the dead body; which was also the pleasure of

mastery over oneself, the feeling of command that comes with the

attainment of a high degree of clinical detachment. The pleasure

of seeing, unveiled, sumptuary textures representing skin, breasts,

back, legs and genitalia, especiaUy of the female, a kind of ana

tomical voyeurism. The pleasure ofmutilation, torment, and insult

meted out to the anatomical subject; a malicious satisfaction in the

anatomical violation of funerary honor (the privileges of social

and inteUectual rank) . The pleasure of shocking the reader, who,

unprotected from the nightmares ofthe dissecting room,suffers the

momentary trauma of exposure to the ugliness and chaos ofdeath,

and to the interior of the body with its proliferating strangeness,

asymmetries and contamination. Looking at Bidloo's Anatomia,

we see disturbing echoes ofsexual fetishism and political torture, a

suggestion heightened by the creamy, sensual quality that Lairesse,

the artist, and van Gunst and Blooteling, the engravers, impart

(with amazing artistry) to the skin texture and shadows and folds

of cloth. That the anatomical subject can be an object of desire,

like the fruit in a stiU-life table arrangement, is a not very hidden

potential in Bidloo's anatomy.

The erotics of anatomy, however, were not confined to

the hyper-realistic style. Throughout much of the early modern

period, dissection was regarded as a kind ofundressing ofthe body

(and sometimes a

rape of the grave), and the anatomical iUustra

tion was the only legitimate domain in which male and female

genitals could receive detailed representation. The anatomical

iUustration, by virtue of its proximity to the iUegitimate domain

of pornography, had a glow, a

tingle. This potential was made

GETTING REAL
r.
36

41. Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty (1717-1785) [artist; printer]. Anatomie generate des

visceres en situation.... Paris, 1752. Planche 9. Color mezzotint. National Library of Medicine.

42. Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty (1717-1785) [artist; printer]. Myologie complette en

couleur et grandeur naturelle.... Paris, 1746-1748. Fig. 14. Color mezzotint. National Library

of Medicine.

Gautier D'Agoty's spectacular anatomical mezzotints showed off his mastery of innovative

color print technology.

GETTING REAL
manifest in the work ofJacques Fabien Gautier D'Agoty, an artist

and printer, not an anatomist, who reveled in the grotesquerie

and eroticism of the dissected body. Although sometimes clum

sily rendered, his technicaUy masterful mezzotints transgressively

point to the convergence of death, pathology, sex, and monstrosity

through a bravura deployment oflurid colors and creamy textures,

and, in some works, monumental scale. You didn't need to have

anatomical realism to have anatomical eroticism. But Gautier's

sensationalist approach was atypical—

he was an innovative master

printer who used extravagant images of the dissected body and

body parts to show off his command of the art and technology

of printing (and thereby gain patronage in high places; for his

pains he was awarded an aristocratic title by the king). Gautier

employed anatomists, but usually it was the other way around: the

anatomist employed the artist. And, in mid and late eighteenthcentury Europe, cooUy detached realistic depiction was the most

prestigious mode of anatomical representation, a celebrated cul

tural achievement.

This is not to say that art and aesthetics were com

pletely expunged from the realistic school of anatomical iUustra

tion as handed down from Bidloo to Hunter and HaUer—

only

a particular kind of art and aesthetics. The artful representation

of anatomical objects remained a crucial part of the science of

43. Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty

(1717-1785) [artist; printer]. Anatomie

des parties de la generation de I'homme et

de la femme. Paris, 1773. Plan. V. Color

mezzotint. National Library of Medicine.

37

DREAM ANATOMY
anatomy. Anatomists continued to work with artists, and contin

ued to value high artistry, but only of one type: the art of the

real. In the waning years of the eighteenth century, the Scottish

anatomist John BeU marked the change, truculently denouncing

"the vitious practice of drawing from the imagination," instead of

"truly from the anatomical table." BeU hated anatomical figures

38

44. Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) [anatomist].

Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) [artist].

Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams. . . .

Amsterdam, 1690. T. 71. Copperplate

engraving with etching. National Library

of Medicine.

A dissected arm emerges from a book,

iconographically signifying that true anatomi

cal knowledge comes from dissection of

the human body and from the production of

books based on such dissections.

formed from the imagination of the painter merely;

sturdy and active figures, with a ludicrous contrast of

furious countenances, and active limbs, combined with

ragged muscles, and naked bones, and dissected bowels,

which they are busUy employed in supporting... or even

demonstrating with their hands.6

His solution to the "continual struggle between the anatomist

and the painter" was to get rid of the artist entirely and do his

own (notably harsh) iUustrations (which, to our eyes, have a naive,

almost lurid, crudity). BeU's coUeagues didn't, or couldn't, foUow

his example: they ceded representation to artists, but took complete

command of the iconography. The artist, who had almost always

been inteUectuaUy and sociaUy subordinate to the anatomist, lost

creative control, even ofthe margins.

But why did this rupture between science and art hap

pen? And why in northern Europe, between the 1680s and 1800?

What forces were at work? Where should we look for causes?

Literary historian Richard Sha argues that medical authorities

like WiUiam Hunter experienced, or were responding to, some

kind of "epistemological panic," a crisis of cultural authority and

representation, which in turn intensified the need to visibly dem

onstrate learned medicine's power to describe and understand the

human body7 If so, it was a crisis of long duration. Historians teU

us the scientific revolution of the 1 600s—

the natural philosophy

GETTING REAL
of Descartes, Bacon, Boyle, and Newton, the founding of the

Royal Society and other early institutions ofscience—

was in part

a reaction to anxieties produced by the devastating religious wars

between Protestants and Catholics, and among various Protestant

sects, a reaction to civil and theological turmoil.8 In response to

radical religious attacks on established hierarchies, inequitable

economic relations, and theological orthodoxies—

attacks that

were authorized by claims of divinely inspired revelation—

an

elite network of educated and ingenious gentlemen, in coUaboration with a

flourishing and ambitious artisanal class, developed a

method for discerning the true nature of phenomena, based on

careful empirical observation and experimentation. The new sci

ence was a means of acquiring knowledge, but also oflegitimating

(and delegitimating) an order of things that was seen as natural,

political and theological. In sequestered spaces, away from the

violent struggles of competing religious sects, social groups, politi

cal factions, dynasties and nations, the natural philosopher could

produce and accumulate dependable knowledge of the material

world: unadorned, sober, reliable facts. And one of the models of

the new science was anatomy, which in turn received and adopted

45. John Bell (1763-1820) [anatomist;

artist]. Engravings of the bones, muscles,

and joints, illustrating the first volume of the

anatomy of the human body. 2nd ed. London,

1804. Plate VII. Etching. National Library of

Medicine.

Bell criticized "the subjection of true

anatomical drawing to the capricious

interference of the artist, whose rule it has

too often been to make all beautiful and

smooth, leaving no harshness . . . ." His own

drawings and etchings are notably harsh.

39

DREAM ANATOMY
40

46. Govard Bidloo (1649-1713)

[anatomist]. GeTard de Lairesse (1640-

1711) [artist]. Ontleding des menschelyken

lichaams.... Amsterdam, 1690. T. 89.

Copperplate engraving with etching.

National Library of Medicine.

Bidloo wanted to show the anatomical

object just as the artist sees it, but also

included a few illustrations in the popular

still-life genre (which sometimes used

anatomical objects as symbolic reminders

of human mortality and signifiers of the

new science).

the new ethos of the natural philosophers in its representational

style: an almost fetishistic attachment to descriptive detail, the

picture as visual observation and documentation ofstudy.

But this explanation assumes that politics, theology, and

philosophy exercised asuperordinate influence on anatomical

iUustration. It doesn't reckon with picture-making and picture

coUecting as a cultural practice, and doesn't account for the cul

tural origins ofthe realist aesthetic. In the 1600s and 1700s, artists

vied to make ever more realistic portraits, scenes of everyday life,

and depictions of stiU-life table arrangements. This intensifying

aesthetics of realism emerged from the demands of the market

place, from competition between coUectors of art —

members

of hereditary, civic, commercial and religious elites —

for ever

more spectacular trophies of painterly virtuosity to adorn their

homes, and civic and religious spaces. And from coUectors' desire

to represent themselves, their possessions and civitas within the

frame of the picture. The competition between coUectors in turn

GETTING REAL
fostered competition between artists to show off their technical

abilities in realistic representation to gain attention from patrons

and buyers of art, as weU as the public and coUeagues. (A simi

lar competition occurred among humanist scholars and among

anatomists for coUegial recognition, patronage, and readers.)

This was a situation that especiaUy obtained in the Low

Countries (present—day Netherlands and Belgium). In the course

of the seventeenth-century, having secured independence from

Spain, the Netherlands emerged as a vibrant center ofworld trade,

and entered into a period of dazzling prosperity. It also emerged

as the center of a particularly briUiant style of realistic depic

tion—

the art ofVermeer, Ter Borch, Bailly, Van Eyck. Accord

ing to art historian Svetlana Alpers, in the Italianate tradition of

Renaissance painting, the "world was a

stage on which human

figures performed significant actions based on the texts of the

poets" or scripture. Renaissance painting was "a narrative art." 9

But seventeenth-century Dutch painters, Alpers teUs us, wanted

to render what the eye saw, not teU a

story. The artist gifted with

technical mastery regarded himself as an instrument for repro

ducing views, and therefore producing knowledge, ofthe physical

world. Picture-making was "the art of describing": the "discov

ery of the world and ...crafting of it" were "presumed to be as

one." 10 This was a congenial aesthetic for early modern anatomy

and some of its origins can be found in Vesalius, who famously

argued that the body can only be known in aU its exact particulars

through dissection, commentary and iUustration. De fabrica, we

should remember, served not only as a founding text for scientific

anatomy, but also for art anatomy. The final book of Defabrica, on

41

47. Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) [anatomist].

Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) [artist].

Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams. . . .

Amsterdam, 1690. T. 10. Copperplate

engraving with etching. National Library

of Medicine.

DREAM ANATOMY
48. Ren6 Descartes (1596-1650) [author]. Tractatus de homine, et de formatione foetus.

Amsterdam, 1677. Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

A diagrammatic sketch of the translation of image from eye to brain—the physiological

equivalent of a camera obscura.

GETTING REAL
the anatomy of the brain, features especiaUy realistic images that

perhaps anticipate the Dutch emphasis on hyper-realism; the artist

attempts to render what he sees, even the cadaver's face with aU its

particularities, as it sits on the table.

But Dutch artists took realism much further. Dutch paint

ing and the new science ofBacon and Boyle were nurtured at the

same breast, and imbibed the same ethos. StiU-lifes often featured

natural objects, obtained from voyages of trade and discovery, that

were part of philosophical coUections: coral, feathers, skuUs and

bones. Simon Luttichuys' stiU-life of ca. 1635 depicts the conver

gence of realist art, anatomy and Baconian science, by showing a

table arrangement that includes an anatomical book (opened to an

iUustration derived from Vesalius), along with painted and drawn

portraits, a globe, human skuU, and convex mirror. n

Anatomists

lagged behind artists by a few decades, but between 1685 and

1800 they graduaUy adopted the visual vocabulary ofNetherland

ish pictorial realism. (In the eighteenth century, when England

and Scotland emerged as centers of anatomical study, many of

the British anatomists who attained wide influence did so in col

laboration with Dutch artists and engravers.) An apparent paradox

then: The aesthetics of realism played a role in encouraging the

exclusion of aesthetic elements in anatomical art—

an exclusion

that became the defining characteristic of the new style of ana

tomical representation. The influence also traveled in the opposite

direction. If, asAlpers argues, the artist thought ofhis eye as a cam

era obscura that transferred views of the physical world onto his

brain, and from there through his hand to paper or canvas

—

and so

produced knowledge—

then natural philosophy (which sought to

purge itself of aesthetic elements) played a role in theorizing the

aesthetics of Dutch realism.12

But this stiU only defers the larger question: at the level

of day-to-day practice, what was going on in seventeenth- and

ANDRE AE VESALllBRVICLIE N SIS. DE HVUaM C O K P orMK^u—l,~cnm1&a»u*TMr~~J'**lfi—'r^f<r<JI—'&**»**"

49. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

[anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani

corporis fabrica.... Basel, 1543. Page 605.

Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

Vesalius's De fabrica laid the foundation

for the new anatomical realism. The

illustrations dealing with the anatomy of

the brain are especially naturalistic, even

showing the identifiable features of a face.

DREAM ANATOMY
7. IB II f. k.i/i. ,■/!/.. /■/..,; in,

44 50. William Hunter (1718-1783) [anatomist].

Jan van Riemsdyk (fl. 1750-1788) [artist].

The anatomy of the human gravid uterus.

Birmingham, 1774. Tab. II. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

An eminent anatomist and "man-midwife",

Hunter focused on a specific topic (late

pregnancy) and a single "subject" (a woman

who died near the end of term). Illustrations

that represent only "what was actually seen,"

he argued, carry "the mark of truth" and are

"almost as infallible as the object itself."

eighteenth-century Europe, and especiaUy the Netherlands, that

fostered this cultural valuation of realistic images in anatomical

iUustration and art generaUy? Here, I would like to suggest that the

cognitive changes manifest in the new aesthetics and practice of

realistic art were fostered by emergent market practices, emergent

social identities, emergent public spheres, and the ongoing process

of state formation. In early modern economic exchange, voyages

of discovery and trade, war, and the social world of courts, volun

tary associations, coffeehouses, taverns and salons—

aU proliferating

features ofEuropean life—

there was a growing appreciation ofthe

need to differentiate the real and the true (reliable and profitable

information) from delusion, superstition, and falsification. A realis

tic appraisal of the material and social world was seen as necessary

and proper to the successful pursuit of commerce, conquest, and

social standing.

GETTING REAL
At the same time, as new persons and social groups pros

pered in an increasingly prolific economy and culture of consump

tion, there was also a new valuation of, and pleasure in, texture: not

just the textures of cloth, wood, and food (which loom large in

seventeenth-century Dutch painting), but also the representation

of texture in painting, printing, drawing, and sculpture. Added to

this was a new valuation ofthe finer things in life and in art, especiaUy the demanding techniques of naturalistic representation.

And, finaUy, there was a concomitant growth of cul

tural practices of valuation. People were increasingly assessing,

and devising means of assessing, the value of things, increasingly

engaging in a

spoken and written discourse of evaluation. The

ethos of critical thinking and connoisseurship that nourished in

Renaissance Europe intensified, part of an expanding culture of

buying, trading, speculation, consumption, and self-fashioning

presentation of possessions and self.

None of these things exactly caused the development of

new standards and ideals of anatomical representation—

but aU of

them contributed to the atmosphere that nourished it. By the

51. Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777)

[anatomist]. C. J. RoUinus [artist], /cones

anatomicae... Vol. 2. Gottingen, 1756.

Fascicle III, Tab. V. Copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

52. Philipp Galle (1537-1612) [author].

Johann Collaert (d. ca. 1622) [artist].

Conspicilla. Photoprint of an engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

In the 17th century, Holland became a center

of world trade and experienced a "golden

age" of prosperity and cultural creativity.

45

Inurnta .vnlj'u-iUa (wit, qua htmmum

«.0N5J>1CILLA.

, ;

Ohscurwrcs ittuunt caLitfina .

DREAM ANATOMY
46

53. Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1697-

1770) [anatomist]. Jan Wanderlaar

(1690-1759) [artist]. Andrew Bell

(1726-1806) [engraver]. Tabulae sceleti e

musculorum corporis humani. Edinburgh,

1777. Tab. IV. Copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

54. Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1697-

1770) [anatomist]. Jan Wandelaar

(1690-1759) [artist]. Tabulae sceleti e

musculorum corporis humani. London,

1749. Tab. IV. Etching with copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

end of the eighteenth century, at the highest echelon of anatomi

cal achievement, realism prevailed. One teUing example: in the

1740s and '50s, anatomist B. S. Albinus was lauded for the preci

sion, beauty and grandeur of his anatomical plates, which were

the largest ever published. People marveled at the anatomical

figures (the product of along coUaboration with Dutch artist

Jan Wandelaar) , and also at the fanciful, extravagant backgrounds

that they were posed in. But by the late eighteenth century this

marriage of anatomy and fancy could no longer be justified. Later

editions omit the backgrounds.

The triumph of anatomical realism was not, however, the

end of history. Toward the end of the eighteenth century another

anatomical style emerged, which featured composite, idealized, and

often intensely colored views ofthe body. In this style, bodies and

body parts floated in air, free ofaU context: anatomy was cleansed of

its association with death. The process of dissection was expunged;

the prosthetics of dissection and the dissecting table were sup

pressed. Everything except the body or body part was regarded as

a distraction. The particularity of the dissection and of the view

that the eye sees, so prized in the harsh style, itself becomes an

obstacle to the truth: a

specific body always has pathologies and

idiosyncrasies that obscure the "general" or "typical" character

istics of bodies, organs, and systems. But the distinction between

anatomical realism and universalism was not absolute. Some works

featured both styles, or had illustrations that blended the two;

and most universalist works retained the realistic emphasis on

precise detail.

The other haUmark of the new universalist style was the

use of color to visuaUy separate out the parts. In the late eigh

teenth century this was a difficult task: Gautier's mezzotint process

demanded a degree of technical virtuosity that was nearly impos

sible to imitate. In the early nineteenth century,John Lizars and

GETTING REAL
Tab IV
Paolo Mascagni used other methods, highly demanding and labor

intensive, but with the development of chromolithography and

other commerciaUy feasible technologies of color printing, the

universalist style took off. Anatomists continued to produce works

in the mode of anatomical realism, especiaUy in pathological and

surgical anatomy

—

and many cheap medical books continued

to recycle crude woodcut iUustrations derived from much older

works, even Vesalius—

but by the 1830s and '40s, anatomical universalism began to predominate. It is familiar to us as the style

of Gray's Anatomy and as the style of the most widely circulated

twentieth-century anatomies.

Both anatomical realism and anatomical universalism sup

pressed iconographic, theatrical, and ornamental elements. Science

dealt with the real, with the truth of the body and the physi

cal universe. Art was given everything else: moral truth, history,

aesthetics, embeUishment, metaphor, myth. The seventeenth- and

rtpla tu-liiinqraptur

55. Jean Baptiste Sarlandiere (1787-1838) [author]. Louis Courtin

(fl. 1809-1841) [artist]. Anatomie methodique.... Paris, 1829. Plate 13.

Chromolithograph. National Library of Medicine.
56. Paolo Mascagni (1755-1815) [anatomist]. Antonio Serantoni (1780-1837) [artist].

Anatomia universale.... Pisa, 1823-1832. Viscera. Tabula VI. Overprinted and handcolored copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

A gifted anatomist, Mascagni produced a comprehensive and unprecedented series

of brilliantly colored, oversized, anatomical plates. In the omission of background and

intensive use of color, his anatomical figures exemplify the new free-floating style of

anatomical representation.

49

DREAM ANATOMY
T:ib.|||

•inti ii ayumoui-oli

U'mpornli

v\a n«"-°

Irni-porjihs
57. Wilhelm Braune (1831-1892) [anatomist]. C Schmiedel (fl. mid-1800s) [artist].

Topographisch-anatomischer atlas nach durchschnitten an gefrorenen cadavern....

Leipzig, 1872. Tab. III. Chromolithograph. National Library of Medicine.

58. George Viner Ellis (1812-1900) [anatomist]. George Henry Ford (1809-1876)

[artist]. Illustrations of dissections in a series of original coloured plates, the size

of life, representing the dissection of the human body.... London, 1867. Plate XXV.

Chromolithograph. National Library of Medicine.

59. John Lizars (17879-1860) [anatomist]. W. H. Lizars (1788-1859) [artist;

engraver]. A system of anatomical plates of the human body.... Edinburgh, ca.

1825. Plate I. Hand-colored copperplate etching. National Library of Medicine.

51

'■«:u

DREAM ANATOMY
52 60-61. Francesco Bertinatti (fl. 1829-1839)

[anatomist]. Paolo Morgari [artist] Element!

di anatomia fisiologica applicata alle

belle arti figurative. Turin, 1837-1839.

Lithograph. National Library of Medicine.

Art anatomy used cadavers and skeletons

as models for sculpture and painting. It

concentrated on skeletal and muscular

anatomy and omitted everything else. The

anatomical study—

of real, imaginary, and

prospective sculptures and paintings—

became a genre in its own right.

eighteenth-century rise of formal institutions of medicine and

science coincided with the rise offormal institutions of art, the art

academies where, just as in medicine, professors of anatomy taught

students and performed anatomical dissections, and anatomy held

a place of prestige in the curriculum. In academic art, fantastic,

humorous, and aUegorical representations of the anatomical

body still flourished, especiaUy on the theme of human mortality.

The anatomical study, as preparation for a history painting or a

sculpture, or as an artwork in its own right, became a familiar

genre of art.

But anatomical representation exceeded both scien

tific iUustration and fine art. As innovations in print technology

made it possible to produce cheap iUustrated books, newspapers

and posters, moral and metaphorical representations of the ana

tomical body circulated widely. Anatomy could be found in the

GETTING REAL
^fe

*-vVsV-.-?tt

IW^

1 UMKNTI M ANATOMIA"

LICATA UXI htLi.i: aiiti V^J

HI y.BEHTIXATTl. p

>-

. *»»**<**'*
f>-3

TKlvC />Q.I\. OsioXfJt,
55

■19!?'*'

62. Jacques Gamelin (1739-1803) [artist]. Nouveau recueil d'osteologie et de

myologie. Toulouse, 1779. pi. 1. Etching. National Library of Medicine.

63. "Clorion" [artist]. Anatomical illustration. New Harmony, Ind., 1830. Manuscript.

Pen and ink, with water color. National Library of Medicine.

A preoccupation with musculature was characteristic of much of art anatomy, which

often emphasized the striations of the muscles to show their twisting, rope-like quality.

The elevation of form over content gave such illustrations a feeling of high abstraction.

DREAM ANATOMY
64. Henry Hall Sherwood (1769-1847?)

[author]. The motive power of the human

system, with the symptoms and treatment

of chronic diseases.... New York, 1841.

Page 13. Wood engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

65. Mary S. Gove (1810-1884) [author].

Lectures to ladies on anatomy and

physiology. Boston, 1842. Frontispiece.

Wood engraving. National Library of

Medicine.

proliferating domain ofpopular health, where authors used arrest

ing images to attract and instruct a mass readership; in advertising

art, especiaUy for products that related in some way to health or

the human body; and in novels, political cartoons, animated film,

and other more remote regions ofpopular culture. In those terri

tories, the creative imagination and anatomy did business together,

and stiU do.

56

66. Frederick Hollick (1818-ca. 1875)

[author]. The origin of life: a popular

treatise on the philosophy and physiology

of reproduction, in plants and animals,

including the details of human generation. . . .

New York-St. Louis, 1845. Frontispiece.

Lithograph, from daguerrotype. National

Library of Medicine.

Hollick, a popular writer on health, gave

public lectures on human anatomy to large

and enthusiastic audiences in Boston, New

York, St. Louis, New Orleans and other

cities. This frontispiece portrait shows him

fraternizing with an anatomical model used

in his stage show.

GETTING REAL
Xiih or Lt»i: * srowm n.y

<7 , t^-

K.riOLLH'K.M.D.
Der Mensch alsJndustriepalast

SAUERSTOFF

i?5 . .•

"

;.' KOHLENSAURE

AusKahn,DAS LEBEN DES MENSCHEN/Fr-anckh'sche Verlagshandlung, Stuttgart/
^r-.' .

'l</4i/na/l/l<\<,:> i///^r //;>.

t ont<\ 1-,'iu J,/, im.r ,n-r< m/f.< , M mtit r '//*}■»-''

59

67. Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [artist]. Der mensch als industriepalast. Stuttgart,

1926. Chromolithograph. National Library of Medicine.

Kahn's modernist visualization of the digestive and respiratory system as

"industrial palace," really a chemical plant, was conceived in a period when

the German chemical industry was the world's most advanced. The poster

was enormously influential and translated into many different languages.

68. J. J. Grandville (1803-1847) [artist]. Voulez vous dejeuner avec nous, la

mere Piton? France. Chromolithograph. National Library of Medicine.

In the 19th century, cartoons often used anatomical images and themes.

Here a group of crows dissect, and consume, an anatomical subject.

DREAM ANATOMY

OUR CADAVERS, OURSELVES

OR THE RETURN OF THE ANATOMICAL REPRESSED

/ want to live in an age which sees similar beauty in a

flower

and in the severed limb of a human being.

—

Joel-Peter Witkin, 1997

/// ourstudy ofAnatomy there is a mass of mysterious

Philosophy

—

Thomas Browne, 1643

This essay began with the assertion that we think of ourselves as

anatomical beings, a

self-image derived from the work that anato

mists and artists have collaboratively produced over the centuries.

We aU have multiple identities, some loudly proclaimed, some

understated or even implicit. Anatomical identity is one of the

latter. It's so pervasive, so routine, that we don't usuaUy take notice.

In the year 1700 most people in Europe and North America

thought of themselves as an unstable amalgam of meat, spirit,

reason, and corruption, or as a microcosm of the universe. Only

a thin upper crust of learned physicians and gentlemen had ever

seen a detailed anatomical iUustration or conceived of themselves

as anatomical entities. That is obviously no longer the case

—

in

69. Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author;

artist]. Der mensch gesund und krank,

menschenkunde 1940.... Vol. 2. ZurichLeipzig, 1939. Page 471. Relief halftone.

National Library of Medicine.

70. Taite Alyson Puhala [artist]. The Human

Body. East Granby, Conn., 2003. Color

crayon. National Library of Medicine.

Today, a section on human anatomy is often

included in the elementary school curriculum.

61

DREAM ANATOMY
62

71. U.S. Naval Hospital, San Diego, CA: X-Ray

Department. Photograph, ca. 1960. National

Library of Medicine.

many schools, the first unit on human anatomy occurs in kinder

garten. But even if we had never been taught it in a classroom set

ting, we would stiU see our own bodies represented in figurative

painting and sculpture, X-rays, and other imaging technologies,

and see the anatomical body in the doctor's office posters, maga

zine ads, anatomical adventure films like Fantastic Voyage (1966)

and Osmosis fones (2001), and gory horror films like The Texas

Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Re-Animator (1985), and The Silence of

the Lambs (1991). In the last ten years or so, the anatomical body

has even begun to appear on television, especiaUy the new round

of forensic shows like CSI (2000). So the subject of anatomical

representation and the boundaries between art and science is not

purely academic: it has reference to our own experience.

Ifwe believe anatomy is our inner reality, then science has

the most legitimate claim to be the highest authority over it. But

the artist also has claims to be a privUeged representer of inner

realities. Since the advent of romanticism in the early nineteenth

century, the artist has assumed the role of prophet, a reader of

augers and signs. And, even in the era of modernism and post

modernism, that conception of the artist as a visionary seeker of

hidden truths that we conceal from ourselves, stiU obtains. In the

academic art tradition, which stiU has many adherents, anatomy is

the technical knowledge out of which the artist crafts representa

tions of the human figure that somehow convey the reality of

the human condition. The new art anatomy is more conceptual.

It plays with anatomy as a vocabulary of selfhood, an emblem

of political, social, cultural, and existential realities, a

template of

human identity, or maybe the Other, the alien inner world that we

are permanently estranged from.

OUR CADAVERS, OURSELVES
FULL TERM INFANT

ntma samuaB Tts«

ttumar mo

WEIGH! 7 LBS. 4 OZS. LENGTH 21 INCHES

1/4 Mi W KM

LSI Of L»BO* • CHILCOtVS BURC*U

72. Infant Growth and Development. U.S. Department of Labor, Children's Bureau.

Washington, DC, ca. 1943. Photo offset poster. National Library of Medicine.

After the discovery of the X ray, radiological imagery circulated widely in posters,

advertisements and cartoons. The X ray became part of our visual vocabulary

of selfhood.

63

DREAM ANATOMY
64 73. Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-

1669) [artist]. Tabulae anatomicae....

Rome, 1741. Tab. X. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Berrettini's anatomical figures playfully

stage the divided self.

Photographer Katherine Du Tiel, for example, projects

anatomical iUustrations onto the human body and plays with the

discrepancy between the real body and the representation. Du

Tiel highlights the impossibility of complete correspondence by

making deliberate mistakes. She projects a front onto a back, a

woman onto a man, a side onto a front. Sometimes she shows

written labels and things out ofscalejust to let us know that we're

not looking at some new technology of anatomical imaging, that

we're looking at ourselves, and something else. Something similar

is accomplished in the work ofRosamond PurceU. Her briUiantly

lit photographic compositions document a

strange lost world of

anatomical specimens, objects originaUy designed to exemplify the

particulars of human anatomy and pathology, and also to amaze.

And which now amaze us with their grotesquerie and beauty,

and utter divorcement from the bodies from which they were

obtained—

and from us.

For the new conceptual anatomical artists, anatomy is

simultaneously the icon of the body as it exists under the regime

ofScience and Reason—

the world that governs us, that makes our

bodies legible, controUable, mappable—

and the undomesticated

body, which is outside our control. We identify with the images

of anatomy, which are fashioned from real bodies, but the match

is never exact, always requires adjustment. The works of Damien

Hirst, Marc Quinn, Alexander Tsiaras, Carolyn Henne and other

anatomical artists seem to say that the self is a

fragile construction,

cobbled together from faUible technologies and a biological given

of flesh and fluids, liable to breakage and spoilage. Hirst famously

created sculptures out of actual dissections of animals. Quinn

OUR CADAVERS, OURSELVES
65

74. Rosamond Purcell (b. 1942) [photographer]. Unknown anatomist. Jar containing

face and double apples. Anatomical specimen, date unknown. Boerhaave Museum,

Leiden. Photograph, 1986. National Library of Medicine.

Rosamond Purcell's photograph of a fanciful centuries-old anatomical specimen

hauntingly evokes bodily fragmentation and alienation.

DREAM ANATOMY
75. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

[anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani

corporis fabrica.... Basel, 1543. Page 187.

Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

Anatomical representation makes the

insides of our bodies visible and familiar,

but also reveals a strangeness, an

otherness. In dramatizing the dissected

body, Vesalius contributed to a new visual

iconography of monstrosity.

made a portrait bust of himself, using his own frozen blood. The

piece, entitled "Self," would have a

very different meaning had it

been made from stage blood instead of the real stuff. Ditto with

Hirst's animal dissections: their realness is the whole story.

The same could be said about the controversial exhi

bitions and performances of Gunther von Hagens, who makes

fuU-body anatomical specimens and stages them as a

large-scale

exhibition for the general public caUed Body Worlds. Von Hagens

has invented a

process, caUed "plastination," that removes the

water from a cadaver and replaces it with preservative plastic. Von

Hagens doesn't bid for cultural authority by caUing himself an

artist. He is a weU-known anatomist and has scientific credentials

to confer legitimacy on his work, ifthe spectacle ofhis anatomical

productions doesn't sufficiently testify to his special expertise. But

he also claims to be reviving the playful tradition of sixteenthand seventeenth-century anatomy, an age in which the distinction

between scientific work and pleasure had not been consolidated.

His specimens often reference sports or games: a cadaver sprints as

the flesh trails off him, another plays chess, and another basketbaU.

The displays recaU the era ofRuysch and Albinus, when the fan

ciful anatomical museum was first invented. In some pieces, von

Hagens restages scenes from early modern anatomical IUustration,

but in three dimensions, using dead bodies as his medium. His

prolific presentations of real dissected bodies are pitched some

where between work and pleasure, a tension that appeals to a

larger-than-customary crowd of museum and exhibition goers,

but annoys the anatomical profession and cultural policiers, who

dislike the crossing of lines. Body Worlds has had runs in London,

OUR CADAVERS, OURSELVES
Munich, Los Angeles, and Seoul, and has attracted hundreds of

thousands ofvisitors, and much coverage in the press. Von Hagens

has also courted controversy by performing a dissection before a

live audience for broadcast on Great Britain's Channel Four.

Von Hagens, Quinn, and Hirst are often accused of

attention-mongering, vulgarity, cheap sensationalism, and an

unhealthy self-preoccupation amounting to narcissism. (Quinn

and Hirst were introduced to the American and British public

in a controversial group show caUed Sensation.) The charge has

some justification: given the crowded cultural marketplace, it's no

surprise that artists and exhibitors wiU resort to almost any subject

or medium to get attention. But let's not judge them too harshly:

Vesalius and his coUeagues and successors also vied for attention,

for readers and students and patronage, and also depended on

their ability to amaze: the science of anatomy, with its dissection

performances and strange representations of dissection, was an

early modern version of the "stupid human trick" (a very smart

67

76. Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731)

[anatomist]. Epistola anatomica,

problematica nona.... Amsterdam,

1679. Tab. 10. Etching with copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Ruysch was a great anatomical showman.

Here he shows how he could blow on a

straw inserted into the dura mater to show

off its texture.

DREAM ANATOMY
77. Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) [anatomist].

Alle de ontleed-genees-en heelkindige

werken... Vol. 2. Amsterdam, 1744. Tab. II.

Engraving. National Library of Medicine.

A selection of bizarre anatomical specimens.

78. Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [artist]. Man in

Structure and Function.... New York, 1943.

Page 161. Relief halftone. National Library

of Medicine.

68 Kahn, a physician, popular medical writer and

artist, used modernist visual styles to show

the body in motion, and motion in the body.

stupid human trick). It's easy to resent and deplore the way that

anatomical artists recruit our attention, and capitalize on it. Our

culture privileges reason and spirit over the flesh, and substance

over surface. On that basis perhaps we can indict anatomical art

for bad faith. But it's a fact oflife: our culture also revels in fleshi

ness and sumptuous outer wrappings and coverings. Only the

flashiest grandstanders can make themselves visible in the blizzard

of competing cultural productions. The new anatomical artists try

to play it both ways: they want to make us think, but also make us

look. Like pornography, the viewer's reaction to their body art is

immediate, a conditioned response. We want to see. (And maybe

also to feel superior to what we see.)

But to stop there is too easy. Why is anatomical art so

popular in the present moment? Why does the new conceptual

art anatomy speak so powerfuUy to us? Here's my theory: For

hundreds of years, the anatomist and artist did ventriloquism with

cadavers, making them speak, sing, dance, and teU jokes. EventuaUy

the tables turned: the images ofanatomy became part of us, started

speaking through us. We became the ventriloquist's dummy, an

effigy ofthe anatomical self. Anatomical identity inhabits us, even

as it coexists with, and infuses, other representations of the body.

We swim in a sea of body images: beautiful bodies, funny

bodies, athletic bodies, dead and dying bodies, on television and

film, and the web, and in newspapers and magazines. As the bodies

float by, they constantly exhort, cajole, and incite us to think about

our own bodies: how we look, how we feel. And the whole thing

works: we survey and shape and transform and fret over ourselves.

We diet, train at the gym, do physical exercise, yoga, swing dance,

martial arts, more than any other people in history. We examine

ourselves for acne and breast cancer and a thousand other seri

ous and not so serious conditions. Our attention is continuaUy

directed toward our bodies, and we attend. We are glutted with

body images, services, technologies, sensations.

OUR CADAVERS, OURSELVES
-rn;

M.

*%•

:*
70 79. Robert Seymour (1798-1836)

[artist]. Cholera "Tramples the victors

& the vanquished both." London,

1831. Chromolithograph. National

Library of Medicine.

The iconography of human anatomy

has an intimate connection with the

iconography of death.

Yet we also feel disembodied. We spend much of our lives

sitting in cars, or in front of computers and television screens,

doing almost nothing with our bodies. We prefer packaged ver

sions ofthings that substitute for more fuUy experiential activities:

we buy a plastic bag of food, open it, and feel like we're cooking.

And we understandably prefer to purchase products and services

that protect us from the sting of embodied discomfort, pain, anxi

ety and loss. We buy aspirin and more powerful drugs, and we're

protected from the experience ofpain. We pay for the services of

health and funerary professionals to place veils between us and

death, and the dead body. The cumulative result is that we are

haunted by an unaccountable loss, or maybe feel like ghosts our

selves: we deprive ourselves of the experiences of bodily life; our

bodies are absent.

And we need something strong to reconnect ourselves

to our bodies, to make contact with life and with death. An aura

of realness—

the real body, real anatomies, the real self—

emanates

from the art ofDu Tiel, PurceU, Henne, Hirst and Quinn, and the

displays of the Mutter Museum, Hunterian Museum, National

Museum of Health and Medicine, and Body Worlds. Art is good

for you, science is good for you

—

so we are supplied with moral

justification—

but what brings the customers through the turn-

>;y

&"**

OUR CADAVERS, OURSELVES
stile is the pleasure of looking at real bodies and body parts, even

two-dimensional visual representations based on "the real body."

Some high-minded people might dismiss this as the voyeurism,

or maybe narcissism, of the herd. They forget that anatomists,

microscopists, radiologists, endoscopists, and many other medical

professionals, know such pleasures, but would rather not publicly

acknowledge them. At least not since Govard Bidloo and his suc

cessor anatomists began to draw the line, some 250 years ago.

From a safe distance, we enjoy the art ofthe "new anato

mists," which permits multiple interpretations, deliberate ambigu

ity, irony, and alienation. 13 We also appreciate the drawings and

objects of early modern anatomy, for their wit and charm, for

their artfulness or crudity, for their historical role in the progres

sive increase of knowledge of the human body, and as markers of

a bygone era. A great divide separates such productions from our

own scientific iUustrations of the body. The iUustrations in our

anatomical textbooks are not meditations on death and human

mortality, do not refer back to Christian or classical martyrs, or

any literary or theological or mythological character or tale. They

are not posed in any landscape or cityscape; they don't dance or

80. Rosamond Purcell (b. 1942)

[photographer]. Oscar Batson (1894-1979)

[anatomist]. Slices of skull. Anatomical

specimen, mid 20th century. Mutter

Museum. Photograph, 2000. National Library

of Medicine.

71

81. Rosamond Purcell (b. 1942)

[photographer]. Cesar Taruffi (1821-1902)

[anatomist]. Flayed and dried torso of adult

human. Anatomical specimen, 19th century.

Museum of Abnormal Human Anatomy

(Museo Cesare Taruffi), Bologna. Photograph,

ca. 1993. National Library of Medicine.

DREAM ANATOMY
72

82. Jacques Benigne Winslow (1669-1760)

[author]. "A grave robber flees from a corpse

that has come to life." The Uncertainty of

the Signs of Death. London, 1746. Woodcut.

National Library of Medicine.

Before the passage of laws, in the 19th

century, that gave medical schools the right

to take the bodies of the unclaimed poor,

anatomists (or their agents) robbed graves

to get their cadavers.

83. Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (ca. 1460-

ca. 1530) [anatomist]. Isagoge breves

perlucide ac uberime, in anatomiam humani

corporis.... Venice, 1535. Page 7. Woodcut.

National Library of Medicine.

Berengario's illustrations give little

anatomical detail, but visually represent the

sense of wonder that attends the opening

of the body.

flirt, or express any emotion. An anatomical illustration or speci

men, we expect, shouldn't have to sing for its supper. It shouldn't

try to scare us. It shouldn't try to remind us of our inevitable

fate. It shouldn't have any aUegorical or metaphorical registers. It

shouldn't make us laugh or smile.

That refusal to acknowledge the pleasures of anatomical

knowledge has a positive as weU as negative valence. We believe

that respect for the dead should be a universal right: anatomy's

culture of discretion is not only a defining characteristic of the

contemporary profession, it is also our version offunerary honor.

We prevent ourselves from looking and playing with the dead

because they, and prospectively we, are entitled to respect. And

that boundary helps define our version of human dignity and

human rights. We believe it's wrong to seU our body parts or bod

ies, wrong to make shows out of the dead, or parts thereof, for

strictly commercial gain.

These ideas are deeply rooted in anatomical history. For

centuries, anatomists took their bodies where they wanted, and

made sport ofthem, to the distress of a

large segment ofthe pub

lic. In Great Britain and America, there was much resistance to

the anatomical taking of bodies. In the late eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries, there was a

stigma attached to anatomical

dissection; anatomists knew that their transgressions might pro

voke a crowd of angry townspeople to storm the school and take

back their dead. But the profession never fuUy acknowledged the

legitimacy of their opponents' objections. As the source of ana

tomical material switched from iUegal bodysnatching to legal (but

stiU involuntary) appropriation ofthe bodies ofthe poor, through

laws that permitted medical schools to take the bodies of people

who died in the poorhouse, a shroud of discretion descended

upon the anatomical enterprise. That discretion has, if anything,

deepened, now that anatomists get most of their bodies through

OUR CADAVERS, OURSELVES
ctnh«fi, dematomia;

gura habesj

duos mu[*

culos obli*

quos afcea j

dcntcs;qui

fc incruciat

cu ouobus

Dcfcendeci j

bus ia alia

figura pod

us:qui q

de

Dcfcedeces

func fupra

iftosafccn;

dentes : 8C

tocus vnus

ex pdiftis

raufcultsde

fccndetib9

fupra pofi;

'tis in alia fi

gura cu cor

dx fuafup,

equitacob*

lique muf *

cuiu vnuni

ex iftisafce

detib* obli

que: Si fa?

ciuncfimul

figura.x.lfc

gr*cc : 8C

iftorummu

[culoij: etii

parscarnca

eft a faceribusrcordx vero eorfi feint in medio vetris:qfut et Duai£ pelli*

culagttft habentvna pellicula tamufupequirante mufculos lungos:alia

vero pellicula eft infra mufculos Iongos:q adherer cordis latitudinaliu

mufculogu&l iftfcord*etterminaturinIinea:qci medio uctris:uc vides*
he .vnatc mist Ovektak:- . by the Watch arh^<; '\ ff Viff V/ m a Hamper

74

84. William Austin (1721-1820) [artist]. The Anatomist Overtaken by the Watch... Carrying

off Miss W-ts in a Hamper. London, 1773. Colored etching. National Library of Medicine.

Fleeing the scene of a failed bodysnatching is Dr. John Hunter, the brother of William Hunter

and a celebrated anatomist in his own right.

OUR CADAVERS, OURSELVES
voluntary donation programs, and are faced with the practical

need to show respect for their cadavers so as not to offend the

feelings ofthose who donate their bodies, and the need to adhere

to the ethical standards ofinformed consent that came in the wake

of the exposure of Nazi medical experiments, theTuskegee study

and other abuses.14

Thus the professional anatomist vehemently insists that

the dissection, manipulation and presentation of dead bodies

should have only one purpose: to produce and disseminate reli

able, scientific knowledge ofthe body Anatomy is not for pleasure

and not for profit—

although history teUs us that, in some ways,

it always has been. This anatomical insistence on sober study and

scientific disinterestedness is self-justifying but also legitimat

ing. Anatomical knowledge benefits aU mankind, but only the

anatomist knows the secrets of the body. And the keeping of the

secret is both to protect the public (which might be traumatized

by too much familiarity with the facts of death) and to protect the

profession. It is only since the 1970s (when bioethics was finaUy

born, as a field ofstudy and a body ofregulations), that anatomists

can make any legitimate claim to be concerned with protecting

the dead.

Not surprisingly then, the anatomical profession, and a

segment ofthe public, are alarmed when anatomical artists rip off

the shroud. They are professional provocateurs, who smuggle bod

ies and body parts across the boundaries ofpropriety, and use them

as effigies to mark the spot. The founders ofthe profession—Vesa

lius, Ruysch, Bidloo and Hunter—

had no professional principles

in this regard: they felt free to take the bodies of criminals, outcasts,

and indigents and use them as they wished. The moral boundary

was then stiU unmarked. Whereas now, the moral boundary—

like

the boundary between art and science—

seems almost a fact of

nature. And we take pleasure and umbrage when anatomical art

ists put on their extravaganzas, and remind us: not so.

75

85. Charles Estienne (ca. 1504-1564)

[author]. Etienne de la Riviere (d. 1569)

[anatomist]. De dissectione partium corporis

humani.... Paris, 1545. Page 59. Woodcut.

National Library of Medicine.

DREAM ANATOMY
86. Interior of an unidentified classroom, students posing next to three cadavers and a

skeleton. United States, ca. 1910. Photograph. National Library of Medicine.

OUR CADAVERS, OURSELVES
Notes

l.The well-born few were, to some extent, also sharers of the secret, privy to the public

performance of dissection in the anatomical theater.They were permitted to witness

the spectacle of transgression and mutilation, and the display oflearned language and

procedures. Similarly, apart from physicians and surgeons, in the early modern period,

only a small upper crust oflearned readers and collectors had access to, and knowledge

of, illustrated anatomical books.

2. Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago:

University ofChicago Press, 1980).

3. The only people not having fun were those whose bodies were conscripted for use as

anatomical subjects. The indigent poor, criminals, suicides, prostitutes, and anyone executed

for capital crimes, served as the raw material from which anatomical knowledge was mined

and minted, and suffered a terrible fate: the utter loss offunerary honor.

4. Francis Bacon, The Great Instauration (London, 1620) in The Works of Francis Bacon,

Vol. 8; trans.James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath (Boston:Teggard

& Thompson, 1863), proem.

5. Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal-Society of London for the Improvement of Natural

Knowledge (London, 1667; rpt., St. Louis:Washington University Press, 1958), 111.

6.John Bell, The Anatomy of the Human Body (2d ed.; London, 1804), vi.

7. Richard C. Sha, "Scientific Forms of Sexual Knowledge in Romanticism," Romanticism on

the Net 23 (August 2001) http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/23sha.html

77

8. See for example, Steven Shapin, A Social History ofTruth (Chicago: University ofChicago

Press, 1994); MargaretJacob, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution (New York:

Knopf, 1988).

9. Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago:

University ofChicago Press, 1983), xix.

10. Ibid, 270.

11. Simon Luttichuys (1610-1661), Still Life with Skull, ca. 1635-40, oil on canvas, National

Museum, Gdansk, Poland.

12. Samuel van Hoogstraten's 1678 treatise on the art of painting refers to the image cast by

a camera obscura as a "truly natural painting"; Alpers, 27.

13. "The New Anatomists" was the name of an art exhibition that opened in March 1999

at the Wellcome Trust's Two 10 Gallery, London. Here I use the term broadly to denote the

larger^group of artists currently working with anatomical themes and materials, outside the

older academic art tradition.

14. In the UCLA body parts scandal of 2004, the director ofthe university's willed body

program was arrested for selling body parts for commercial gain amounting to hundreds of

thousands of dollars. In the Alder-Hey scandal in Great Britain, a medical professor took

organs from the bodies of dead children without asking permission from parents. Both cases

demonstrate that an older imperative also continues to motivate the anatomical culture of

professional discretion: the desire to cover up the abuses of the profession.

REVISITING DREAM ANATOMY

£-♦ Theairterior of our bodies isliidden to us. What happens

beneath the skin is mysterious, fearful, amazing. In antiquity,

k the body's internal structure was the subject ofspeculation,

fantasy, and some study, but there were few efforts to represent

it in pictures. The invention of the printing press in the

fifteenth century

—

and the cascade of print technologies

that followed—

helped to inspire a new spectacular science

of anatomy, and new spectacular visions of the body.

Anatomical imagery proliferated, detailed and informative

but also whimsical, surreal, beautiful, and giotfigue—

a dream

'% SHiatomy that reveals as much about the outer world as it

does the inner self. Over the centuries anat&rty has become

a visfcal vocabulary of realism. We regard ^Banatomical

r as our inner reality, a apdium throu^which we

imagine society, cukure and the human condition.

■

<l The Nlki^al llbrar^tollidicines DreamAnatomy

itioJran fern ttctobeT^, 2Qj)2 to July 31, 2003.

>ns, Dream

Anatomy displays the anltomicfl imagination in some ofits

most astonishing mcarrmtjons, from the fourteenth century

to the present.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME

With the founding of the first medical schools in medieval Europe,

anatomv asce al curncuas a ritual that illustrated the

treatises ofrevered ancient authorsand knowledge of the medical profession. The mid-fifteenth-century invention of the printing press, and the rise of a new spirit of

critical inquiry associated with the Renaissance, inspired a scientific

revolution in anatomy. Anatomists began to dissect in order to

investigate the structure of the body, and produced texts illustrated

with images based on their dissections.

In the early modern era (1 450-1 750), the boundary between

art and science was ill-defined. Anatomists and their artist collabora

tors made use of familiar modes ofrepresentation—

the iconography

of landscape, nudity, mythology and Christianity. Artists tried to

create illustrations that were accurate, but also amazing, beautiful,

and entertaining.
Pre-modern Anatomies

Fascination with the interior of the body goes

back to the dawn of humanity. The ancient

Egyptians had specialized knowledge in

some areas of human anatomy, which they

used in mummification and, to a limited

degree, surgery. Even before the advent of

large organized cultures, prehistoric peoples

performed rituals with remains that indicate

familiarity with gross anatomy. Because

they hunted and slaughtered large animals

for food, the Inuit and Australian aborigines

developed a detailed knowledge of mam

malian anatomy, and a complex vocabulary

of anatomical terms, which they applied to

animals and humans.

Rock paintings dating back to the

Neolithic in Europe, Africa and Australia

feature schematic and expressive represen

tations of the human interior, as do some

pre-modern European, Islamic and Asian

manuscripts.

82 87. Rock painting, Kakadu National Park,

Northern Territory, Australia, ca. 6000 B.C.E.

© Archivo Iconografico, S.A./Corbis.

88. Mansur ibn llyas (fl. ca. 1390) [author].

Tashrih-i badan-i insan. Iran, 1488. MS P19,

folio 18A. Manuscript illustration. National

Library of Medicine.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | Pre-modern Anatomies

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME
85

* -.-

89. Anonymous [artist]. Anatomical illustration. In Muhammad Akbar (also known

as Muhammad Arzani) (d. 1722) [author]. Tibb al-Akbar (Akbar's Medicine). [Iran or

Pakistan], ca. 1680-1750. Ink and watercolor. National Library of Medicine.

90. Magnus Hundt (1449-1519) [author]. Antropologium de hominis dignitate, natura

et proprietatibus, de elementis, partibus et membris humani corporis. Leipzig, 1501.

Page 119. Woodcut. National Library of Medicine

DREAM ANATOMY
Anatomical Primitives

The invention of the printing press in the varying degrees of skill and sophistication, no Vesalian influence continued to be

1450s, and the development of woodcut

and copperplate engraving, made it possible

to publish multiple copies of illustrated

treatises on anatomy. Whimsical, surreal,

beautiful, and often grotesque, the new

anatomical images were rendered with

in a hodgepodge of styles.

After the publication of the first

modern anatomy, Andreas Vesalius's

revolutionary De humani corporis fabrica

(1543), illustrations in the Vesalian manner

proliferated. But images with limited or

featured in surgical manuals, almanacs,

encyclopedias and philosophical treatises,

alongside discussions of astrology,

alchemy and theology.

91. Johannes de Ketham (fl. late 15th

century) [author]. Fasciculus medicinae.

Venice, 1500. Woodcut. National Library

of Medicine.

In medieval anatomy, the anatomist didn't

soil his hands by touching the cadaver.

Here, at a podium above the action, the

anatomist reads from an anatomical text.

A lower-ranking barber-surgeon performs

the dissection.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | Anatomical Primitives
i^tsm:. S^^^^^^W^W^WM

Absolvta\i"ad\iTrand.e PARTI*- Hwi

VM HOMINIS CREATVUARVM DIUINARVM PR/tST.WJlbMMi FABRIC* F.XIMIO \Kii:'fCIO SCVLPTAM

87

92-93. Johann Remmelin (1583-1632) [anatomist; artist]. Catoptrum microcosmicum....

Augsburg? 1619. Copperplate engraving; cut-out flaps attached to a base print. National

Library of Medicine.

This anatomical Adam and Eve mix scientific anatomy with religious and mythological icons.

The pair are "dissected plates," with flaps that open to reveal the organs underneath the skin.

DREAM ANATOMY
94-95. Johannes de Ketham (fl. late 15th century) [author]. Fasiculo de medicina. Venice,

1494. Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

Fasciculus medicinae, the first printed illustrated medical compendium, was published

in 1491 and republished in subsequent editions in Latin, Italian and other languages.

Alongside its straightforward anatomical illustrations are other views of the body: an

"astrological man" and a "wound man."

96. Toviyah Kats (ca. 1652-1729) [author]. Ma'a'seh Toviyah. Venice, 1708. Folio 106

Recto. Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

This illustration from a Hebrew encyclopedia pairs the interior of a human with the interior

of a house, a visual metaphor. The organs, like rooms in a house, have different functions.

Kats, one of the first Jews to study medicine at a German university, received his degree at

Padua and served as court physician to the Ottoman Sultan.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | Anatomical Primitives
IP unn jvs

]v^y
DE ANATOMtA

\

JElrabee btf

cpttma fi0U/

ram matrice

cu iiuo ohim"/

busaacbisai

ligata/mira q

I'um rcfticiifi i

fuo luco ua /

turali afUgari

vafcfcmiiia/

rijs/cj vafa repmmanrur ad

corpus mam

ci9 vt videe:?

oiimt fup:a

marnce area

re$ione ram?

ab ctrtulgcnre

c auena cbiii:

vrfup2aMctu

cft/s bcc ma/

rrit eft %ura

ca imgna ac

ficlla ppaa

m parte cuius

ante 20:1 nam

ra locauit vc/

fica> cum fute

po:t9 vrmdi/

buu/c coHuni

vefkaeiermi/

natural cotfo

rnamcijtpnm

fttpn fiflkaV

fl fciatur tuf/

ua&aectauie

menu© vfdm

tor anaromi'/

5*ndo(oemi/

nipgnametn

c etiam no p

sminam.
DB ANATOMIA

issSS^^^MM^

DE ANATOMIA VSNrSf- S'VPftEMIi

^%-

£•- Vis

^iissss!

S§

%|m97-101. Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (ca. 1460-ca. 1530) [author]. Hugo da Carpi (1455-

1523) [artist]. Isagogae breves.... Bologna, 1523. Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

Berengario, an Italian surgeon and physician, refashioned the 14th-century anatomical

treatise of Mondino de'Liuzzi for print publication. The illustrations are not keyed to the text,

and are in a variety of styles, including the danse macabre.

DREAM ANATOMY
**r ytam&o&Bm**' -

M^mrr

INFVITABILE FATVi^

=dl

:^m^^^^^^^^^^WW^m
102-103. Johannes Eichmann (also known as Dryander) (1500-1560) [anatomist].

Anatomiae, hoc est, corporis humani dissectionis.... Marburg, 1537. Woodcut. National

Library of Medicine.

Dryander, a German professor of anatomy, revised the works of Berengario and Mondino.

In the left figure, torso serves as an anatomical coat of arms. The phrase inevitabile

fatum (inevitable fate) links the illustration to the iconography of death.

CAPITIS HVMANF, FIGVRA NONA.

f

iij

103
Cadavers at Play: The Anatomical

Visions of Charles Estienne

Charles Estienne's 1545 De dissectione

partium corporis ("On the dissection of the

parts of the human body") would have been

the first lavishly illustrated anatomy, had

publication not been delayed by a

lengthy

legal dispute with anatomist-collaborator

Etienne de la Riviere. The woodcuts, while

imaginative, lack the rigor and detail of

Vesalius's 1543 De fabrica—

and unlike De

fabrica posed no challenge to the authority

of the ancient anatomists. To cut costs,

Estienne took some of his illustrations

from non-anatomical books, replacing the

middle of the woodblock with an insert

that depicted the body's interior. In these

figures, the boundary of the insert is

revealed by a faint white line.

CORP. HVMANI LIB. fl f. i-s

94 104-105. Charles Estienne (ca. 1504-

1564) [author]. Etienne de la Riviere

(d. 1569) [anatomist]. De dissectione

partium corporis humani.... Paris, 1545.

Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

S.iiij.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | Cadavers at Play
242 DE DISSECT. PARTIVM

Loca tantfi proponfmusvcrmifor*

mis, & partium huiufrnodi tenuiffi*

matim:n«m quemadmodum adocu*

Itm in ccnfeftiore difncillime often*

di pofiuc,itaeciam longe difficillimfi

fuerir, partes vfaueadeo tcnucs hie

exa&ilfimc demonftrarc.

}

A Vornix, f>fallioidcs,cor

vus cameratunt.

B Priitcifiifocrmiformis

circa Jepu, anteriores

yetriculos diflinguens.

C Conation glandula.

D Vertnifoitnislogitudo.

E Glutia.ligamcta ctgtes

adiacetesyermiformi.

F Via a tertio \entriculo ad auartum.

il
D EDI SS EC T. PARTIVM

wnmmivummMMimMmuAMMHMviM,TM,?.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | Cadavers at Play
DE DISSECT. PARTIVM CORP. HVMA K ! LIP III

106-109. Charles Estienne (ca. 1504-

1564) [author]. Etienne de la Riviere

(d. 1569) [anatomist]. De dissectione

partium corporis humani.... Paris, 1545.

Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

97

DREAM ANATOMY
Anatomical Arts and Sciences

In 1543, Andreas Vesalius produced De

humani corporis fabrica, the first profusely

illustrated anatomy book. A brilliant dissec

tor, the 28-year-old Vesalius insisted that

reliable knowledge derives from examina

tion of cadavers, not ancient texts. He

subjected the old anatomical treatises to

a rigorous test: a comparison with his own

direct observations of the dissected human

body. De fabrica became the founding text

of modern anatomy and inspired a host of

successors. Like Vesalius, they compared

their results with existing texts, corrected

errors, and produced new texts with illustra

tions. The production of images based on

dissection became a central component of

scientific anatomy.

^NDRB^fE VES^tLIl.

■MHiHffl.ili

110-111. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

[anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani

corporis fabrica.... Basel, 1543. Woodcut.

National Library of Medicine.

(This page.) The only known first-hand

likeness of Vesalius shows the formally

attired anatomist grasping the dissected

arm of a cadaver. Vesalius's head is

disproportionately large compared to his

body, but the cadaver is larger still—

leading

to speculation that the engraver pulled the

composition together from several sources.

(Opposite page.) Vesalius dissects a

cadaver in the center of a crowded

anatomical theater, while Death hovers over

the scene. Before De fabrica, depictions of

dissection showed the anatomist presiding

at some distance from the cadaver, while

lower ranking barber-surgeons did the dirty

work of dissection.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | Anatomical Arts and Sciences

100

112-116. Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) [anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and

the Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani corporis fabrica.... Basel, 1543.

Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

(Above.) In combination, the backgrounds of the muscle men illustrations form

an idealized panoramic view of the Paduan landscape.

(Opposite page.) Vesalius hoped that his illustrations would be useful to artists

as well as students of anatomy.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | Anatomical Arts and Sciences
101

V.D.D D*>Imhrm .TffafviMa,mrntrSmodo l*<kiminnh Jrnuniitumfvtmiimigfiu

ctnbrtfirto. C*f XIIII.

DECIMIQVARTI CAPITIS F1GVRA

TfJf

G,C,C p.^!^,U/&*rmid^Krm&'mfvr(e*>*ik*f*kr,tw*J<Ji*TiIfi{Ct»gtmt>

tUifvuii ■fimtrtfimmilunm[iAmfTefri.t,fm

iijhmi> n,m>*FoculifrpraliftjtTM4ut4lh,T.

SECVNDA SEPTIMl LIBRI FIGVRA-

"PRisfE S H AT 3 f<^fHU^lpr#prtmmfUfiilB*>,tmtami0*w»b'»*

Mrgji&m.ftrmdt stf td/fewramAutos birlc*kn^r(wdtm.

A Tmriarimplitrt'.ftftimiJ&'iritfrt'nimjtfl.

E Qjww««* C Qttwm*.

K. pTtm*tjk*rUmt*gnilk*ijTUrij. I Sttmii tmrltt

V.T Trrmi±r*mmh\mrfiim>.

trirtfurrrmj ftuflrxIcmtfi.

X.X Ttrtripmpmtktmmtihiiema^x^aitt.fttferi

^K^AjWijUa'fa'irM.WrlM.

DREAM ANATOMY
Vesalius's Progeny: Valverde and Eustachi

De fabrica inspired other anatomists to

attempt their own books. Juan Valverde

de Amusco studied with Realdo Columbo,

Vesalius's pupil and successor. Valverde's

Historia de la composicion del cuerpo humano (1556) was the first anatomy published

in Spanish. Valverde used Vesalius's work

as a source for his own anatomical visions,

which humorously played on identifications

of self and other, and of matter and spirit.

Bartolomeo Eustachi (also known

as Eustachius) was court physician to the

Duke of Urbino and Cardinal Giulio della

Rovere. In 1552 he prepared a series of

playful anatomical plates that featured

figures placed inside a box with graduated

measurements to help readers identify the

location and scale of the parts. Most of the

plates were discovered and published in

1714, long after his death.

102 117, 120-121. Bartolomeo Eustachi (d.

1574) [anatomist]. Giulio de'Musi (fl. 1535-

1553) [artist]. Romanae archetypae tabulae

anatomicae novis.... Rome, 1783. Colored

copperplate engraving. National Library of

Medicine.

118-119. Juan Valverde de Amusco (1525-

ca. 1588) [anatomist]. Gaspar Becerra

(15207-1568?) [artist]. Anatomia del corpo

humano.... Rome, 1560. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | Vesalius's Progeny
Tauola.I.delLib.VI. t;

Tauola delle Fig.del Lib.llII. 10S

I

I

i -i/ , ■.»'**-*( //I

DREAM ANATOMY
Tauola.VI.del Lib. IIL 101

104

122-123. Juan Valverde de Amusco (1525-ca. 1588) [anatomist]. Gaspar Becerra (15207-1568?) [artist].

Anatomia del corpo humano.... Rome, 1560. Copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | Vesalius's Progeny
Fyutt I

Tauola. III. del Lib.V. 118
A Peek in the Cabinet: Ruysch's Theater of the Body

Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) was the first

great exponent of the anatomical speci

men. Visitors from all over Europe came to

marvel at his "repository of curiosities." As

Amsterdam's chief instructor of midwives

and "legal doctor" to the court, Ruysch had

ample access to the bodies of stillborns

and dead infants and used them to create

bizarre multi-specimen scenes. In making

such displays, he claimed an extraordinary

privilege: the right to collect and exhibit

human material without the consent of

the anatomized.

106 124. Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731)

[anatomist]. Alle de ontleed-genees-en

heelkindige werken... Vol. 3. Amsterdam,

1744. Taf. 85. Etching with copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

An embalmed female baby, placed on a

cushion, holds a tree of wax-injected airpassages from the lungs (the left main

bronchus of the lung). The stem (trachea)

of the trees is tied off with a ribbon, a

typically Ruyschian touch of whimsy.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | A Peek in the Cabinet
Xtz.i.

125 Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) [anatomist]. Alle de ontleed-genees-en

heelkindige werken... Vol. 3. Amsterdam, 1744. Page 32; foldout. Etching with

copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Ruysch festooned infant skeletons with various objects, organic and non-organic,

and arranged them in grotesque landscapes of body parts.
Body Part as Body Art: The Anatomical Specimen

In the late 1600s, a new anatomical art form

emerged: the specimen. Anatomists began

to collect and exhibit bodies and body parts.

Their specimens were real—

and they dazzled

viewers. Like wax and marble, the human

body served as a sculptural medium. The

anatomist preserved his material, and then

colored, costumed, and arranged it in glass

cases or free-standing displays.

Anatomists produced objects using

different methods in different media. "Natu

ral" preparations, made from human or

animal bodies, could be "wet" (submerged

in alcoholic preservative in sealed jars) or

"dry" (injected with resins or wax, and then

dried). Anatomists also made "artificial"

preparations from wax, papier mache and

other materials.

108 126. Unknown anatomist. Rosamond Purcell

(b. 1942) [photographer]. Dissected, cleared

and stained baby in ajar. Amsterdam, early

20th century. Anatomical specimen. Vrolik

Museum, Amsterdam. Photograph, 1995.

National Library of Medicine.

The transparency method of preparing

specimens, using "green oil," was invented

by German anatomist Werner Spalteholz

(1861-1940). The blood vessels, injected

with a stain, stand out from the transparent

tissue. Most of Spalteholz's specimens were

destroyed by bombing during World War II.

127. Unknown anatomist. Rosamond

Purcell (b. 1942) [photographer]. Skeleton

of a child. Anatomical specimen. Warren

Museum, Harvard Medical School, Boston,

19th century. Photograph, ca. 1989.

National Library of Medicine.

128. Unknown anatomist. Rosamond

Purcell (b. 1942) [photographer]. Dissected

hand with stretched tendons, mounted

on a board. Dried anatomical specimen.

University of Valladolid, Spain, 18th or 19th

century. Photograph, 1995. National Library

of Medicine.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | Body Part as Body Art
■"#?» JV~

*
Show-Off Cadavers: The Anatomy of Self Display

The emergence of anatomical illustration

in the period 1500-1750 coincided with

a

larger phenomenon: a new definition of

personhood that was performed in salons,

coffeehouses, country estates, theaters,

marketplaces and at court. Inevitably,

anatomists took up, commented on, and

played with the contemporary obsession

with self-fashioning and individuality—it was

an era of manners, wit, foppishness, and

coquetry. In the works of Giulio Casserio,

John Browne and Pietro da Cortona, the

illustrated anatomy book is a

stage peopled

with posing, prancing cadavers. Animated

with an exuberant vitality, the corpses

perform an anatomical show for the

reader's gaze.

Tal>. XVII. a«e Lib. i v.

110 129-131. Giulio Casseri (1552-1616)

and Adriaan van de Spiegel (1578-1625)

[anatomists]. Odoardo Fialetti (1573-

1638) [artist]. De humani corporis fabrica

libri decern. Venice, 1627. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Dressed in bonnets, sashes, and

undressed down to skin and layers

beneath, Casserio's figures have the look

of everyday people: peddlers, farmwives,

artisans, laborers, prostitutes, debtors.

Each one evokes a distinctive yet familiar

personality, an attempt at realism with a

hint of comic exaggeration. Some of the

figures stage a not-so-subtle flirtation, a

strip-show.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME | Show-Off Cadavers
TAB -VI.
Tab II
TABVLA XIII aSECVNDA HOMINIS

113

132. In Adriaan van de Spiegel (1578-1625), Giulio Casseri (1552-1616) [anatomists].

Odoardo Fialetti (1573-1638) [artist]. In De formato foetu liber.... Padua, 1626. Tab. II.

Copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

133-134. Giulio Casseri (1552-1616) and Adriaan van de Spiegel (1578-1625)

[anatomists]. Odoardo Fialetti (1573-1638) [artist]. De humani corporis fabrica libri

decern. Venice, 1627. Copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

135. John Browne (1642-ca. 1702) [anatomist]. A compleat treatise of the muscles,

as they appear in the humane body, and arise in dissection.... London, 1681. Page 98.

Copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

DREAM ANATOMY

GETTING REAL

REMOVING METAPHOR AND FANCY FROM ANATOMY

Between 1680 and 1800, anatomists began purging imagina

tive elements from scientific illustration. The truth-value ot

anatomy, they argued, was compromised by visual metaphors,

fantastic landscapes, and comic poses. As old print technologies

were perfected and new ones invented, anatomical illustration

began to achieve greater technical precision, and a brilliant

and dreamlike hyper-aestheticism that showed off, with great

artistry, a more sophisticated knowledge and heightened per

ception of the boundaries, surfaces and depths of the body.

Ultimately, two styles of anatomical realism emerged.

One aimed to show the reality ofdissection, the cutting open of

a particular body with all the prosthetics, furniture and setting

of dissection—

and the ugliness of anatomical mutilation. The

other aimed to show a higher reality, displaying beautified,

cleaned-up, idealized bodies and body-parts that float in air,

with no reference to any one dissection.
Monumental Books and Anatomical Pleasures

In the eighteenth century, the development

of mezzotint, and printing methods that

combined etching and engraving, made it

possible to make illustrations of startling

beauty and painterly texture. Published

in monumental scale and on fine paper,

these plates were spectacles of anatomical

science, artistry and advanced print

technology—

the final act of anatomy's

theatrical tradition. Two notable exponents

of this extravagant anatomy were the

German anatomist Bernhard Siegfried

Albinus (1697-1770) and French artistprinter-publisher Jacques Fabien Gautier

d'Agoty (1717-1785).

In the 1720s Albinus proposed to make

the most beautiful and comprehensive

anatomical atlas ever published, using

stylized figures representing an ideal

humanity. He never completed the

project, but did produce Tabulae sceleti

e musculorum corporis humani (1747).

According to Albinus, the poetically

evocative backdrops were designed to

"agreeably" fill "the empty spaces" and

make his figures look three-dimensional.

Later editions omit the backgrounds—

a concession to the movement to rid

anatomy of extraneous elements.

Gautier d'Agoty perfected a method

of printing colored layers of mezzotint

(a technique that allows for subtle

gradations of shading). The resultant

illustrations looked like paintings on a

page and were remarkable for their

brilliance, eccentricity, and paradoxical

combination of delicacy and crudity. The

subject of anatomy, with its mass of fine

details, was well suited to display Gautier's

mastery of mezzotint. It also gave him

license to show parts of the body not

permitted in other genres of illustration.

1 16 136. Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty

(1717-1785) [artist; printer]. Anatomie

des parties de la generation de I'homme

et de la femme. Paris, 1773. PI. 56. Color

mezzotint. National Library of Medicine.

GETTING REAL | Monumental Books and Anatomical Pleasures
137. Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty

(1717-1785) [artist; printer]. Anatomie des

parties de la generation de I'homme et de

la femme. Paris, 1773. PI. I and II. Color

mezzotint. National Library of Medicine.

These two oversize prints can be put

together to make a life-size anatomical

chart. The grotesquerie of the subject

matter, stiffness of the figure, and eccentric

arrangement of the body parts make for

a characteristic dreaminess that eerily

anticipates 20th-century modernism. In the

lower left corner a tiny fetus or homunculus

floats in a wine-glass.

117

DREAM ANATOMY
138-140. Bernhard Siegfried Albinus

(1697-1770) [anatomist]. Jan Wandelaar

(1690-1759) [artist]. Tabulae sceleti e

musculorum corporis humani. London,

1747. Copperplate engraving with

etching. National Library of Medicine.

Albinus intended his figures to exemplify

an ideal of humanity and an ideal of

anatomical illustration. The cadaver,

chosen for its close approximation to

classical ideals of proportion, stands

against a variety of painterly backdrops,

in various states of anatomical undress.

118

GETTING REAL I Monumental Books and Anatomical Pleasures
I.\U 111
Beautiful Ugliness: Govard Bidloo and the Turn to Realism

With Dutch anatomist Govard Bidloo,

anatomical representation entered a

new era. Some of his plates retained

iconographical elements, but most were

devoid of landscape, metaphor, and

classicism. With high artistry, Bidloo

flaunted his commitment to empirical

observation and naturalistic depiction by

showing what other anatomies omitted:

the prosthetics of dissection (ropes,

props, nails, chains) and the mutilation

and ugliness of the dissected body. In

producing such images, the anatomist

claimed the power to appropriate,

and cut into, dead human beings—

and

demonstrated a masterful clinical

detachment, a privileged indifference to the

horrors of the anatomy room. The new style

initiated by Bidloo was further developed,

in the eighteenth century by William Hunter

and Albrecht von Haller.

120 141-142. Govard Bidloo (1649-1713)

[anatomist]. Gerard de Lairesse

(1640-1711) [artist]. Ontleding des

menschelyken lichaams.... Amsterdam,

1690. Copperplate engraving with

etching. National Library of Medicine.

GETTING REAL | Beautiful Ugliness
143 144

143. Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) [anatomist]. Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) [artist].

Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams.... Amsterdam, 1690. T. 57. Copperplate engraving

with etching. National Library of Medicine.

144. William Hunter (1718-1783) [anatomist]. Jan van Riemsdyk (fl. 1750-1788) [artist].

The anatomy of the human gravid uterus. Birmingham, 1774. Tab. 23. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

The illustrations in Hunter's anatomy were drawn and printed life-size, to avoid distortions

of scale.
Casting the Artist Aside: The Anatomy of John Bell

Scottish anatomist John Bell (1763-1820)

condemned artists and their "vitious

practice of drawing from imagination."

There was, he insisted, a "continual

struggle between the anatomist and

the painter, one striving for elegance of

form, the other insisting upon accuracy of

representation." Bell solved the problem

by drawing, etching, and engraving his own

illustrations. These challenged nearly every

convention of anatomical representation.

His dissected bodies and parts lack

sumptuous texture and graceful line, and

are unleavened by any palliative beauty.

Designed to signify a commitment to

empirical observation, the programmatic

harshness of the illustrations exceeds

the boundaries of realistic depiction,

amounting almost to an oppositional

aesthetic of ugliness.

122 145. John Bell (1763-1820) [anatomist;

artist]. Engravings of the bones, muscles,

and joints, illustrating the first volume of

the anatomy of the human body. 2d ed.

London, 1804. Plate III. Etching. National

Library of Medicine.

GETTING REAL | Casting the Artist Aside
"'■tf*«H ***«

zm$m&*Fi^ynT. ^3SS1

146. John Bell (1763-1820) [anatomist; artist]. Engravings of the bones, muscles, and joints,

illustrating the first volume of the anatomy of the human body. 2d ed. London, 1804. PI. VIII.

Etching. National Library of Medicine.

Bell criticized "the subjection of true anatomical drawing to the capricious interference of

the artist, whose rule it has too often been to make all beautiful and smooth, leaving no

harshness . . . ." His own drawings and etchings are notably harsh.
Another Reality: The Colorized Human Project

By the late 1700s, the commitment to

empirical representation of the body was

increasingly asserted by an obsessive

attention to detail that went beyond

realism. The anatomy of the 1800s

featured fine line, rich texture, intense

color, and, often, the separation of object

from background.

In realistic rendering, detail is

sometimes obscured—

the eye can't make

certain things out. In the hyper-realism

of the new anatomy, detail stands out in

shocking, dream-like clarity, a demanding

visual effect that requires high artistry and

a deep understanding of bodily structure.

In much of nineteenth-century anatomical

illustration, the image is composite,

idealized and beautified. Dissection and

the anatomy room, the particularity of

an anatomical object and its setting, are

suppressed as an unnecessary distraction.

124 147. Jean-Baptiste Sarlandiere (1787-

1838) [anatomist]. Louis Courtin (fl.

1809-1841) [artist]. Anatomie methodique,

ou Organographie humaine en tableaux

synoptiques, avec figures. Paris, 1829.

PI. 9. Chromolithograph. National Library

of Medicine.

148. John Lizars (17877-1860) [anatomist].

W. H. Lizars (1788-1859) [artist; engraver].

A system of anatomical plates of the human

body.... Edinburgh, ca. 1825. Plate IV. Handcolored etching. National Library of Medicine.

John Lizars, a

surgeon, teacher, and

sometime partner of John Bell, collaborated

with his artist brother, William Home Lizars.

The Lizars brothers mixed fine line and

texture with vibrant coloring, which they

achieved through an innovative etching

technique. They inked the surface of the

plate, not the etched-away areas, as in

traditional etching. After printing, each

plate was painted by hand.

"Dlnirpiinipliu

GETTING REAL | Another Reality

^aSftl^tt't VEJftl'TA ANTERIOR ^ 1L»EL CORPO OlAiYO ^■^fe^TJf^^^T
150

151

149. Paolo Mascagni (1755-1815) [anatomist]. Antonio Serantoni (1780-1837) [artist].

Anatomia universale.... Florence, 1833. Strato Terzo Tav. X. Overprinted and hand-colored

copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

150-151. Francis Sibson (1814-1876) [anatomist]. William Fairland (fl. mid-1800s) [artist].

Medical anatomy.... London, 1869. Chromolithograph. National Library of Medicine.

Sibson argued that anatomical illustrations mislead the viewer because preservative

injections and the dissection itself disturb the relative position and texture of parts. His

double illustration is designed to give a "true" picture of the dead body, alongside an

imaginative reconstruction of the same interior in a living body. The vivid colors help the

reader to distinguish the parts, even though the resultant picture is far from what the eye

would actually see.
128

152-153. John Lizars (17877-1860) [anatomist]. W. H. Lizars (1788-1859) [artist;

engraver]. A system of anatomical plates of the human body.... Edinburgh, ca. 1825.

Hand-colored etching. National Library of Medicine.

Scottish anatomist John Lizars was a

surgeon, teacher, and sometime partner of

John Bell. His brother, William Home Lizars, worked on Birds ofAmerica for James J.

Audubon. Despite the expense of publication, their strikingly colored anatomy sold well.

Its success helped the eccentric and contentious John Lizars gain an appointment as

Professor of Surgery at the prestigious College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.

GETTING REAL | Another Reality
rr^ '%>

K

"4.

129

\-5

DREAM ANATOMY
154-155. Paolo Mascagni (1755-1815)

[anatomist]. Antonio Serantoni (1780-1837)

[artist]. Anatomia universale.... Florence,

1833. Overprinted and hand-colored

copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Mascagni's great anatomical atlas was

published only after his death. A lithographic

1826 edition names Corsican anatomist

Francesco Antommarchi (Napoleon's

personal physician, and Mascagni's

sometime collaborator) as sole author. But

scholars recognized the searingly bright

colors and stylized grotesquerie of the

figures as the distinctive work of Mascagni.

156. Wilhelm Braune (1831-1892)

[anatomist]. C. Schmiedel (fl. mid-1800s)

[artist]. Topographisch-anatomischer

atlas nach durchschnitten an gefrorenen

cadavern.... Leipzig, 1872. Tab. IA.

Chromolithograph. National Library

of Medicine.

In the 1810s, Dutch anatomist Pieter de

Riemer made specimens from frozen human

bodies; 40 years later Russian anatomist

Nicholas Pirogoff conceived of a similar

method "by which the human body could be

cut like wood into thin sections." Wilhelm

Braune developed and popularized the

technique.

155

A*// VIM(R| / XX

GETTING REAL | Another Reality
Tllll. I A

■■-t-V'T""" ""T^-rH^.

...rv'"'-1 "'"

| jinumJn'1"" .

'

V hitHi.li.i- ilr<
SAUERSTOFl

I®.- NASE*"
VISIONARY AND VISIBLE

DREAMING ANATOMY IN MODERNITY

By 1800, anatomy had been defined as a science—

the investi

gation of the real—

rather than an art. Anatomy could no longer

tolerate humor, fancy, and ornament. Yet fantastic images of

the anatomical body continued to proliferate. Cast out of

medical' illustration, imaginative anatomy found new homes:

in academic art, where anatomy was an important part of the

curriculum; in popular health, where the need to appeal to

the public inspired the creation of vivid, playful, and eccentric

images; and in political cartoons, film, and fiction—

wherever

anatomical images could be made to serve.

In our time, photography, radiography, digital imag

ing, and computer modeling have multiplied the possibilities

for manipulation and play. Artists and scientists are again

exploring and re-imagining the body, and investigating the

boundaries between their respective disciplines. We continue

to dream the anatomical bodv
Dissection Scenes and Fancies: Anatomical Frontispieces and Title Pages

Title pages and frontispieces functioned

as a visual synopsis of the science and art

of anatomy—

a place where artists could

playfully represent the poetics of dissection.

Such illustrations typically featured

skeletons, cadavers, famous physicians,

and mythical or allegorical figures, placed

in anatomical theaters and arcadian

landscapes, amidst dissecting tables,

bones, classical architecture, floating

symbols and text. The frontispiece was the

last refuge of fantasy in scientific anatomy.

In the mid-1700s anatomists began to

omit them, but they continued on in art

anatomies and popular scientific books.

134

VISIONARY AND VISIBLE | Dissection Scenes and Fancies
135

157. Giulio Casserio (ca. 1552-1616) [anatomist]. Anatomische tafeln.... Frankfurt, 1656.

Frontispiece. Copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Five notable anatomists pose around a cadaver. In the center of the picture, the image of

the Earth, with the continent of "America" visible, signifies that the anatomized body is a

"New World" and dissection a voyage of discovery.

158. Bernardino Genga (1620-1690?) [anatomist]. Charles Errard (16097-1689) [artist].

Anatomia per uso et intelligenza del disegno ricercata . . . . Rome, 1691. Frontispiece.

Copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

The association between death and anatomy continued in art anatomy even as it waned in

medical texts. Genga, a Roman anatomist, specialized in studies of classical sculptures.

Errard, court painter to Louis XIV, helped found the Academie Royale de Peinture and was

the first director of the Academie de France in Rome.

159. Floriano Caldani (1772-1836) [anatomist]. Gajetano Bosa (17707-1840) [artist].

Tabulae anatomicae ligamentorum corporus humani.... Venice, 1803. Frontispiece.

Copperplate engraving. National Library of Medicine.

DREAM ANATOMY
Dreaming Art Anatomy: Fine Art and Anatomical Representation

As naturalistic styles of painting and

sculpture developed, artists sought

advanced knowledge of anatomy: Vesalius

offered some illustrations specifically as

an aid to artists. In the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries, formal art academies

were founded, with anatomy as a core

subject in the curriculum. Professors

of anatomy performed dissections for

their students, and published beautiful,

imaginative, and monumental anatomical

studies that were works of art in their

own right. Typically, art anatomy used

cadavers and skeletons as models for

sculpture and painting. It concentrated on

skeletal and muscular anatomy and omitted

everything else.

136 160. Jean-Galbert Salvage (1770-1813)

[anatomist; artist]. Anatomie du gladiateur

combattant, applicable aux beaux arts....

Paris, 1812. Planche Ire. Two-layer

copperplate engraving, color. National

Library of Medicine.

F^"

H

VISIONARY AND VISIBLE | Dreaming Art Anatomy
161. Jacques Gamelin (1739-1803) [artist]. Nouveau recueil d'osteologie et de myologie.

Toulouse, 1779. Etching. National Library of Medicine.

162. Francesco Bertinatti (fl. mid-1800s) [anatomist]. Paulo Morgari (fl. mid-1800s)

[artist]. Elementi di anatomia fisiologica applicata alle belle arti figurative. Turin, 1837-1839.

Tav. IXa. Lithograph. National Library of Medicine.

DREAM ANATOMY
163. Jean-Galbert Salvage (1770-1813) [anatomist; artist]. Anatomie du gladiateur

combattant, applicable aux beaux arts.... Paris, 1812. Planche 6. Two-layer copperplate

engraving, color. National Library of Medicine.

A military doctor of the Napoleonic era, Salvage based his drawings on dissections of

soldiers "killed in duels, in their prime." For this study of the Borghese Gladiator, an

ancient Greek statue, he arranged his cadavers in the same pose as the sculpture and

meticulously worked out the skeletal and muscular anatomy. Anatomical studies of

important classical sculptures constituted a genre within fine art.

164. Jacques Gamelin (1739-1803) [artist]. Nouveau recueil d'osteologie et de

myologie.... Toulouse, 1779. "Orate ne intretis in tentalionem." ("Beware, lest ye be led

into temptation".) Etching. National Library of Medicine.

Gamelin combined memento mori with anatomical study in beautifully finished etchings

that have the formal qualities of engraving. An accompanying page presents the same

scene in outline, with each bone marked with a letter linked to a caption.

VISIONARY AND VISIBLE | Dreaming Art Anatomy
\&k$ ''

'T &■ .

I

f

f

■

.:■ -".# #

mmm \ ■'-■ --,'.# ■* JP

&

w

\-

Orale ne mlrelu in lenlnl'unieiu
The People's Anatomy: Dreaming

the Body in Popular Medicine

Although allegory, metaphor, and bizarre

juxtapositions were no longer featured in

serious scientific texts after 1800, popular

writers on medical topics continued to

use them. Books and lectures on health

attracted large audiences but there was

much competition. Phrenologists, dietary

reformers, botanical healers, homeopaths,

and orthodox health advocates all vied for

the public eye and ear. Arresting visual

images helped popular writers explain their

ideas about the structure and workings of

the body.

165. Dr. Franke [author]. Anatomischphysioloigischer atlas des menschen...

Berlin, 1891. (Repackaged version of

J.T. White, White's physiological mannikin.

New York, 1889.) Chromolithograph on

cardboard. National Library of Medicine.

As lithographic color printing became

cheaper, life-size two-dimensional

anatomical manikins were increasingly

sold for use in popular lectures, classes

on hygiene, doctor's offices, and traveling

medicine shows where patent medicines

were sold.

166. Edwin Hartley Pratt (1849-1930)

[author]. Frederick Williams [artist]. The

composite man as comprehended in

fourteen anatomical impersonations. 2nd

ed. Chicago, 1901. Plate facing page 95.

Lithograph. National Library of Medicine.

Pratt ardently recommended "orificial

surgery" —

operations on the mouth, nose,

ears, rectum, cervix, urethra—

for problems

such as constipation, eczema, insanity,

tuberculosis, or just for maintenance of

health. His enthusiasm for surgery led to

an emphasis on anatomy in his writings for

the public.

VISIONARY AND VISIBLE | The People's Anatomy
The Sympathetic Man
k?s .^.•■■■•■.fZ'i^. f5s-

<"*"*.

^s\

:i^■•*%

r

c

I* \

V

>'<U "7N-.* °^ '"* d>

I \ %

ytiHetfUf

View showing divisions ot the

brain according to Phrenology.
167. Edward Harris Ruddock (1822-1875) and George P Wood (fl. 1880s) [authors].

Vitalogy; or, Encyclopedia of health and home.... Vol. 1. Chicago, 1907. Frontispiece.

Chromolithograph. National Library of Medicine.

Ruddock, a homeopathic practitioner, wrote popular books on health and a manual of

homeopathic veterinary medicine. Vitalogy stayed in print for decades and sold over

500,000 copies. It offered readers a smorgasbord of alternative medical treatments,

including phrenology.

168. Richard Owen (1804-1892) [author]. On the nature of limbs; a discourse delivered

at an evening meeting of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, Feb. 9, 1849. London,

1849. Titlepage illustration. Wood engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Owen, a leading anatomist, argued that all vertebrates are based on an ideal

"Archetype" or "primal pattern." He criticized Darwin's theory of natural selection,

arguing instead that the pattern of species variation was "ordained."

ninorfcr o^ nfos OnAjf X±lVf/f "JOS )(}ty[

: .Mail iter iionii.i

168
Dreaming the Industrial Body: Fritz Kahn's Modernist Physiology

In the early 20th century, Fritz Kahn

produced a succession of books on the

inner workings of the human body, using

visual metaphors drawn from industrial

society—

assembly lines, internal

combustion engines, refineries, dynamos,

169. Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author].

Das leben des menschen. Vol. 5. Stuttgart,

1931. Page 53. Relief halftone. National

Library of Medicine.

The physiology of vision, with the rods and

cones of the pupils as receptors of light, is

compared to the technology of photographic

reproduction in which an image is screened

and broken down into dot patterns. The

bust of Nefertiti went on display at the

Egyptian Museum in Berlin in 1924 and

quickly became a world-famous icon.

170. Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author].

Das leben des menschen; eine volkstumliche

anatomie, biologie, physiologie und

entwicklungsgeschichte des menschen.

Vol. 2. Stuttgart, 1926. Tafel XIII. Two-color

relief halftone. National Library of Medicine.

The nervous system here is represented as

an electronical signaling system. The brain

is the office where messages are sorted.

telephones, etc. The body in Kahn's work

was "modern" and productive, a theme

visually emphasized through his use of

modernist art styles. Though his books sold

well, his Jewishness and public advocacy

of progressive reform made him a

target

for Nazi attacks. Rescued by American

agent Varian Fry, along with other prominent

Jewish scientists and intellectuals, he was

brought to America in 1940.

VISIONARY AND VISIBLE | Dreaming the Industrial Body
*=—

-•

^HS

/

M

L^^ir.

'

'i IE& -

■ tit

171. Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author; artist]. Der mensch; bau und funktionen unseres

korpers, allgemeinverstandlich dargestellt. Zurich, 1948. Page 297. Relief halftone.

National Library of Medicine.

The body is shown as a board game, signifying that the distribution of ingested

protein in the body is determined by chance and probability.

172. Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author; artist]. Man in structure and function... Vol. 1.

New York, 1943. Page 267. Relief halftone. National Library of Medicine.

A body floats in water, with a U-boat in the distance, showing that the air capacity of

the lungs and its effect on the body's buoyancy has a function similar to the ballast

tanks of a submarine.

147

DREAM ANATOMY
173. Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author; artist]. Das Leben des Menschen... Vol. 2.

Stuttgart, 1926. Tafel XXXIII. Relief halftone. National Library of Medicine.

A view from the interior of a nostril.

j»viwsy»ggay

"r'^■wg

148

VISIONARY AND VISIBLE | Dreaming the Industrial Body
149

174. Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author; artist]. Man in structure and function... Vol. 1.

New York, 1943. Page 266. Relief halftone. National Library of Medicine.

As agricultural laborers do the work of harvesting wheat, their bodies burn energy, a

process symbolically represented by an internal flame.

DREAM ANATOMY
Reuniting the Divided Self:

Katherine Du Tiel and the Art

of Anatomical Identity

150

The process of anatomy involves a prying

apart of the self. The dissecting mind is

divorced from the dissected body. Our

identification with anatomical images

always creates a mirror effect: anatomical

representations are always both Self and

Other. Katherine Du Tiel makes photographs

of living bodies covered with projected

anatomical images—a playful exploration

of our continual attempts to synthesize the

two, or perhaps an ironic comment on the

impossibility of synthesis.

175. Katherine Du Tiel (b. 1961) [artist],

Inside/Outside: Brain Dummy. San

Francisco, 1994. Photograph: © Katherine

Du Tiel. National Library of Medicine.

176. Katherine Du Tiel (b. 1961) [artist].

Inside/Outside: Skull-Head. San Francisco,

1994. Photograph: © Katherine Du Tiel.

National Library of Medicine.

VISIONARY AND VISIBLE | Reuniting the Divided Self
Tfmtal

t

r ^_ V

i i

*

~~ ^*

-*•* ^*

\2 1

(

8

ij

.4

i

^Wfrfe
1 m 4H

KV/J

wkwtw K^VA«8 BB'-m iJBfl V Jm\AV

K^* toI «BW *■ MV ^fl Br

■la >fl JBtifi III ^

Ej' > ^Bl <^H S^k #jb ^TM aI^B ^m Mm mr' mmm

V

J*

wr

tt

"■\

AZL
153

178

177. Katherine Du Tiel (b. 1961) [artist]. /ns/de/Outs/de: Muscle/Hand. San Francisco,

1994. Photograph: © Katherine Du Tiel. National Library of Medicine.

178. Katherine Du Tiel (b. 1961) [artist]. Inside/Outside: Back. San Francisco, 1994.

Photograph: © Katherine Du Tiel. National Library of Medicine.

DREAM ANATOMY
X-Rays and the Cultural Imagination

Wilhelm Roentgen's 1895 discovery of

the X-ray was greeted with rapturous

enthusiasm as one of the technological

wonders of the age. The ability to see

through the skin, into the interior of the

living body, saved lives and profoundly

stirred the cultural imagination. Roentgen

was awarded the first Nobel Prize in

physics and the X-ray rapidly became an

important tool for medical researchers and

clinicians. It also became a favorite subject

for cartoonists and artists—

and quickly

found applications in shoe stores and other

unlikely places.

154 179. The hand of Mrs. Wilhelm Roentgen:

the first X-ray image, 1895. In Otto Glasser,

Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen and the early

history of the Roentgen rays. London, 1933.

Photograph. National Library of Medicine.

The announcement of Roentgen's

discovery, demonstrated by a widely

reproduced X-ray photograph of his wife's

hand, was hailed as great scientific

accomplishment that would revolutionize

every aspect of human existence.

180. John Sloan (1871-1951) [artist].

X-Rays. N.p., 1926. Etching. National Library

of Medicine.

Like other exponents of the "Ashcan

School," Sloan sought inspiration from

everyday scenes of modern life, such as the

taking of X-rays, rather than from landscape,

nudes and the other traditional subjects of

academic art.

VISIONARY AND VISIBLE | X-Rays and the Cultural Imaginiation
182

181. "Deegan Demonstrates How North Country Keeps Pace." In Shoe and Leather

Journal 26 (1946). Graphic reproduction of a photograph. National Library of Canada.

As the X-ray took hold of the popular imagination, X-ray technology was applied to a

variety of medical and non-medical uses. In the 1930s, '40s, and '50s shoe stores

often had fluoroscopes to help customers get a good fit.

182. X-ray of woman's foot, showing fitted shoe. Photograph. National Museum of

Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
The Visible Human Project

Anatomists first began to take cross

sections from frozen cadavers in the

early 1800s. They found that slices could

translate the three-dimensional complexity

of organic structures into flat, easy-to-read

specimens, which then could be preserved

or drawn by an artist.

In 1989 the National Library of Medicine

embarked on a plan to use frozen cross

sections to make a comprehensive digitized

"library" of the human body: the Visible

Human Project. Two bodies acquired

through donations met bioethical standards

of informed consent: a 39-year-old convict

executed in Texas by lethal injection; and a

59-year-old Maryland housewife who died of

cardiovascular disease. Scientists scanned

the cadavers, using CT (computerized

tomography) and MRI (magnetic resonance

imaging). The corpses, deep-frozen in blue

gelatin, were then milled to remove thin

cross sections of tissue, from head to toe.

As each layer was exposed, the surface

was digitally photographed, creating data

that could be reassembled, navigated and

manipulated with computer software.

156

183-186. Visible Human Project Images

Photographs. National Library of Medicine

VISIONARY AND VISIBLE | The Visible Human Project
¥mum

m

'

JJBl 11

Wf

iM^^Hkk. V

&9 mh*'e'~ 4£l§i K^ :lp^i

.*
Dream Anatomies: The Art of

the Visible Human

Anatomical representation and imaging

offer us a trace or facsimile of the inner

self: a mirror image that is an incitement to

dream. The monumental pieces presented

here—works by Alexander Tsiaras, Carolyn

Henne and two Visible Human PlexiBooks originally commissioned by the

San Francisco Exploratorium—use data

from the National Library of Medicine's

Visible Human dataset. By virtue of their

scale, they model a direct one-to-one

correspondence between representation

and reality: the anatomical image looms as

large as the living, breathing self.

1 58 187. The Visible Human as Atlas Holding

the World. Alexander Tsiaras (b. 1963)

[United States]. Animated hologram, 2002.

National Library of Medicine.

Seventeenth-century readers were

encouraged to think of the anatomical

body in geographical terms, as "a little

world," a microcosm. "Whatsoever is in the

universal world is also in man," and made

visible through anatomy, argued Nicholas

Culpepper in 1654. This piece, based on

a celebrated ancient statue, the Farnese

Atlas (ca. 200 A.D., currently in the National

Archeological Museum, Naples), updates

the metaphor.

188. The Visible Human Plexi-Book: Male.

Hinged transparencies in Plexiglas, 2000.

National Library of Medicine.

Originally created for the San Francisco

Exploratorium's Revealing Bodies exhibition,

these two Visible Human Plexi-books,

representing the male and female Visible

Human, are now the largest "books" in the

National Library of Medicine.

VISIONARY AND VISIBLE | Dream Anatomies
189. Suspended Self Portrait. Carolyn Henne (b. 1960) [United States]. Sculpture

installation, 2001. Courtesy of the artist [now in the National Museum of Health and

Medicine]. Photo by Travis Fullerton.

This piece consists of 89 vinyl sheets painted with cross-section images derived from

the Visible Human dataset. To determine the images, Henne made a mold of herself

and sliced it. Then she painted a corresponding Visible Human cross section on each

sheet. From a distance, the body seems to float in three dimensions. Closer up, visitors

can touch the sheets to make the organs assemble and dissolve, or subtly move as if

floating or breathing.

190. Body Scanner. Jussi Angesleva (b. 1977) [Finland]. Interactive installation, 2001.

Collection of the designer.

Angesleva's installation allows a person to track segments of the Visible Human dataset

against segments of his or her own body. Despite the discrepancy between displayed

image and user—

the lack of heartbeat and other internal movements, etc.—

visitors

often assume they are seeing themselves. The experiential "realness" of Body Scanner

shows how easily anatomical imagery gets translated into body image.

HISTORY OF ANATOMY TIMELINE

275 BCE

Herophilus teaches anatomy, Alexandria,

Egypt; performs dissections of human

bodies.

ca. 150 AD

Galen dissects apes, monkeys, cows, dogs;

writes treatises on human anatomy.

ca. 600-1100

Knowledge of Greek anatomical treatises

lost to Western Europeans, but retained in

Byzantium and the Islamic world. Islamic

scholars translate Greek anatomical

treatises into Arabic, Syriac and Persian.

1100s-1500s

Galen's anatomical treatises translated

from Arabic into Latin, later from the Greek

originals.

1235

First European medical school founded at

Salerno, Italy; human bodies are publicly

dissected.

1543

First profusely illustrated printed anatomy,

Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica.

1630s

Print etching invented.

1670s-1690s

Schwammerdam, Ruysch and others

start making anatomical specimens and

museums. Bidloo starts movement toward

greater anatomical realism. First art

academies founded, with anatomy as a key

part of the curriculum.

1740s

Mezzotint color printing method perfected.

1780s

Modern technique of wood engraving

developed by Thomas Bewick, England.

1798

Lithography invented by Alois Senefelder,

Germany.

1316

Mondino de'Luzzi stages public dissections,

Bologna, Italy; writes Anatomia, based on

the work of Galen.

1818

Experiments with the frozen cross

section technique by Pieter De Riemer,

Netherlands.

1450s

Moveable type invented; Gutenberg Bible

printed (1455). Copperplate engraving

invented.

1837

First practical photographic method

invented by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre,

France.

1490

Anatomical theater opens in Padua, Italy.

1491

First illustrated printed medical book

published in Venice, Johannes de Ketham,

Fasciculus medicinae.

1880s

Relief halftone (photoetching) and

photolithography invented.

1895

X-ray imaging demonstrated by Wilhelm

Roentgen.

ca. 1500-1540

Earliest printed illustrated anatomies.

1989

Visible Human Project commences.

1510

Leonardo da Vinci dissects human beings,

makes anatomical drawings.

191. Detail, Floriano Caldani (1772-1836) [anatomist]. Gajetano

Bosa (17709-1840) [artist]. Tabulae anatomicae ligamentorum

corporus humani.... Venice, 1803. Frontispiece. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.
PRINT TECHNOLOGIES

OF ANATOMICAL ILLUSTRATION

1300s

Woodcut printing brought from China to

Europe, used to print textiles

1400s

Paper becomes available in Western

Europe

1423

Earliest known European woodcut print

on paper

1452

Copperplate engraving invented

1450s

Moveable type invented; Gutenberg Bible

printed (1455).

1494

First illustrated printed medical book

published, Johannes de Ketham's

Fasciculus medicinae

162 1543

First profusely illustrated anatomy,

Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica

1620s

First multi-color printed illustrations

1630s

Print etching invented

1640s

Mezzotint invented by Ludwig von Siegen

1740s

Mezzotint color printing method perfected

1780s

Modern technique of wood engraving

developed by Thomas Bewick, England.

1798

Lithography invented by Alois Senefelder

in Solnhofen, Germany.

1837

Daguerre invents first practical

photographic method.

1880s

Relief halftone (photoetching) and

photolithography invented.

Woodcut

To make a woodcut, an engraver starts by drawing an image,

usually a

tracing of a pencil drawing, onto the side grain of a

wood plank. Areas not printed are cut away well below the

surface with a knife or gouge, leaving the flat surface to be inked.

Woodcuts can be put into type blocks along with moveable type,

so that the image and type can be printed together in one run

through the press.

Copperplate Engraving

In copperplate engraving, an engraver copies a drawing onto the

surface of a

copper plate. Areas that will be black when printed

are cut away below the surface with a

sharp tool. The plate is

inked and then wiped clean, leaving ink in the incised lines, a

method that is called intaglio. Copperplate engravings allow for

finer lines and more detail than woodcuts, but the printing of

the image requires more pressure than type or woodcuts (leaving

a characteristic line of indentation around the image). Because

ofthis difference in pressure, if moveable type on the page is

desired, then the page has to be run through the press twice,

once for the image, once for the type.

Hand Coloring

Before the invention of multiple-layer color printing, black ink

anatomical illustrations were sometimes colored freehand, using

tempera or watercolor, by freehand, or in some cases stencil.

PRINT TECHNOLOGIES OF ANATOMICAL ILLUSTRATION
IVOODCUT COPPERPLATE ENGRAVING HAND COLORING

DREAM ANATOMY
Mezzotint

Unlike other engraving techniques, mezzotint proceeds from

dark to light. A metal plate is totally abraded with a tool called

a rocker. Ifinked and printed at this point, it produces an even,

rich black. The design consists of areas oftone rather than lines,

and is produced by smoothing areas ofthe plate with a

scraper or

a burnishing tool. The more scraping and burnishing, the lighter

the area.The resultant illustrations have effects oflight and

shadow. By printing multiple color layers, different shades can be

combined to produce rich hues that look much like oil painting.

Lithography

In lithography, a design is drawn or painted on a polished, or

grained, flat surface of a stone with a

greasy crayon or ink. The

image is chemically fixed on the stone with a weak solution of

acid and gum arabic.The stone is flooded with water, which

is absorbed everywhere except where repelled by the greasy

ink. Oil-based printer's ink is then rolled on the stone, which

is repelled in turn by the water-soaked areas and accepted only

by the drawn design. A piece of paper is laid on the stone and

run through the press with light pressure. The design may be

divided among several stones, properly registered, to produce a

lithograph in more than one color, through multiple printings

on the same page.

PRINT TECHNOLOGIES OF ANATOMICAL ILLUSTRATION
MEZZOTINT LITHOGRAPHY 165

DREAM ANATOMY
Etching

In etching, a plate is covered with a

thin, acid-impervious

coating. Lines are drawn through the coating with astylus, baring

the metal ofthe plate. Acid is then applied which eats into the

exposed areas.The longer the plate is exposed to the acid, the

deeper the bite and stronger the line. The appearance of etchings

is usually free and spontaneous but sometimes can mimic the

formality of engraving. The plate is inked and then wiped clean,

so that the etched-out areas print black.

Wood Engraving

In wood engraving, an engraver draws an image on polished

blocks of dense end-grain wood (usually boxwood). Tools similar

to metal engraving are used to produce non-printing lines. The

uncut surface takes the ink and prints onto paper. The block can

be inserted into a frame along with moveable type, and the entire

page can be printed in one run through the press. The familiar

nineteenth-century newspaper engraving uses this process, which

allows for more detail than the older woodcut technique.

Relief Halftone

Relief halftone is an industrial form ofphoto-etching. First the

artwork is photographed through a dot screen.The negative is

exposed onto a zinc plate covered with light-sensitive gelatin.

The picture is now converted into a dot pattern. The gelatin on

the zinc plate is sensitized by the light through the negative in

the shape ofthe line drawing, and the gelatin which has not been

sensitized is washed away. The sensitized area is then covered with

a waxy substance resistant to acid; the rest ofthe plate is etched,

so that the dot pattern appears in relief. The image then can be

inked and printed onto paper.

PRINT TECHNOLOGIES OF ANATOMICAL ILLUSTRATION
ETCHING WOOD ENGRAVING RELIEF HALFTONE 167

DREAM ANATOMY
**«•?;. ^

BIOLOCIE DEI

BRATENDUFTEt

192. Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author]. Das Leben des Menschen; eine

volkstumliche Anatomie, Biologie, Physiologie und Entwicklungsgeschichte

des Menschen. Vol. 3. Stuttgart, 1926. Tafel XV. Relief halftone.

National Library of Medicine.
EXHIBITION CHECKLIST

A complete list of the books, prints, art installations, multimedia interactives and

graphic reproductions on display during the Dream Anatomy exhibition (October 9,

2002 to July 31, 2003) at the National Library of Medicine. All dimensions refer to

the height and width respectively of the print or the height of the spine ofthe book.

ANATOMICAL DREAM TIME

THE EARLY MODERN ERA

Pre-Modern Anatomies

Rock painting, Kakadu National Park,

Northern Territory, Australia, ca. 6000

B.C.E. Graphic reproduction of a

photograph. © Archivo Iconografico,

S.A./Corbis.

Mansur ibn llyas (fl. ca. 1390) [author]

Tashrih-i badan-i insan. Iran, 1488. Graphic

reproduction of MS P19, folio 18a.

Manuscript. National Library of Medicine.

Anatomical Primitives

Johann Remmelin (1583-1632) [anatomist;

artist]. Catoptrum microcosmicum, visio

secunda.... Augsburg9 1613. Copperplate

engraving. 20 5/8 by 14 1/4 inches. National

Library of Medicine.

Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (ca. 1460-ca.

1530) [anatomist]. Isagogae breves per

lucidae ac uberrimae in anatomiam human

corporis.... Bologna, 1523. Book open to

leaf 72. Woodcut. 8

1/4 inches. National

Library of Medicine.

Jacopo Berengario da Carpi (ca. 1460-ca.

1530) [anatomist]. Anatomia Carpi. Isagoge

breves perlucide ac uberime, in anatomiam

humani corporis.... Venice, 1535. Book

open to leaf 7. Woodcut. 8 inches. National

Library of Medicine.

Johannes Eichmann (also known as

Dryander) (1500-1560) [anatomist].

Anatomiae, hoc est, corporis humani

dissectionis.... Marburg, 1537. Graphic

reproduction of page facing colophon.

Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

Toviyah Kats (ca. 1652-1729) [author].

Ma'a'seh toviyah. Venice, 1708. Graphic

reproduction of Folio 106 Recto. Woodcut.

National Library of Medicine.

Cadavers at Play: The Anatomical Visions of

Charles Estienne

Charles Estienne (1504-ca. 1564)

[author]. Etienne de la Riviere (d. 1569)

[anatomist]. La dissection des parties du

corps humain.... Paris, 1546. Book open to

page 242. Woodcut. 14 v4 inches. National

Library of Medicine.

Charles Estienne (ca. 1504-1564) [author].

Etienne de la Riviere (d. 1569) [anatomist].

De dissectione partium corporis humani....

Paris, 1545. Graphic reproduction of

page 275. Woodcut. National Library of

Medicine.

Charles Estienne (ca. 1504-1564) [author].

Etienne de la Riviere (d. 1569) [anatomist].

De dissectione partium corporis humani....

Paris, 1545. Graphic reproduction of page

59. Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

Anatomical Arts and Sciences

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

[anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani

corporis fabrica.... Basel, 1543. Book

open to page 187. Woodcut. 16 3/4 inches.

National Library of Medicine.

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

[anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani

corporis fabrica.... Venice, 1568. Book

open to page 125. Woodcut. 12 3/4 inches.

National Library of Medicine.

Johannes de Ketham (fl. late 15th century)

[author]. Fasciculus medicinae. Venice,

1500. Woodcut. 12 1/4 inches. National

Library of Medicine.

DREAM ANATOMY
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

[anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani

corporis fabrica.... Basel, 1543. Graphic

reproduction of portrait of Vesalius.

Woodcut. National Library of Medicine.

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

[anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani

corporis fabrica.... Basel, 1543. Graphic

reproduction of page 192. Woodcut.

National Library of Medicine.

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

[anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani

corporis fabrica.... Basel, 1543. Graphic

reproduction of frontispiece. Woodcut.

National Library of Medicine.

Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564)

[anatomist]. Stephen van Calcar and the

Workshop of Titian [artists]. De humani

1 70 corporis fabrica ....Basel , 1543. Graphic

reproduction of page 178. Woodcut.

National Library of Medicine.

Turning the Pages: Vesalius. Multimedia

installation, 2002. Created by the National

Library of Medicine

vesaWus's Progeny: Valverde and Eustachi

Bartolomeo Eustachi (d. 1574) [anatomist].

Giulio de'Musi (fl. 1535-1553) [artist].

Romanae archetypae tabulae anatomicae

novis.... Rome, 1783. Book open to Tab

XXIV. Colored copperplate engraving. 15 3/4

inches. National Library of Medicine.

Bartolomeo Eustachi (d. 1574) [anatomist].

Giulio de' Musi (fl. 1535-1553) [artist].

Romanae archetypae tabulae anatomicae

novis.... Rome, 1783. Graphic reproduction

of Tab XXX. Colored copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

Bartolomeo Eustachi (d. 1574) [anatomist].

Giulio de' Musi (fl. 1535-1553) [artist].

Romanae archetypae tabulae anatomicae

novis.... Rome, 1783. Graphic reproduction

of Tab XXXIX. Colored copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Juan Valverde de Amusco (ca. 1525-ca.

1588) [anatomist]. Gaspar Becerra

(15209-15689) [artist]. Anatomia del

corpo humano.... Rome, 1559. Book open

to page 64. Copperplate engraving. 11

inches. National Library of Medicine.

Juan Valverde de Amusco (ca. 1525-ca.

1588) [anatomist]. Gaspar Becerra

(15209-15689) [artist]. Anotomia de corpo

humano.... Venice, 1606. Book open to

page 108. Copperplate engraving. 12 1/4

inches. National Library of Medicine.

Juan Valverde de Amusco (1525-ca.

1588) [anatomist]. Gaspar Becerra

(15209-15689) [artist]. Anatomia del

corpo humano.... Rome, 1559. Graphic

reproduction of page 95. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

A Peek in the Cabinet: Ruysch's Theater

of the Body

Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) [anatomist].

Alle de ontleed-genees-en heelkindige

werken.... Vol. 3. Amsterdam, 1744. Book

open to page 32; foldout. Etching with

copperplate engraving. 16 inches. National

Library of Medicine.

Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) [anatomist].

Alle de ontleed-genees-en heelkindige

werken.... Vol. 3. Amsterdam, 1744.

Graphic reproduction of frontispiece

and title page. Etching with copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) [anatomist]

Alle de ontleed-genees-en heelkindige

werken.... Vol. 3. Amsterdam, 1744.

Graphic reproduction of portrait of Ruysch.

Etching with copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) [anatomist],

A//e de ontleed-genees-en heelkindige

werken.... Vol. 3. Amsterdam, 1744.

Graphic reproduction of page 568. Etching

with copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) [anatomist].

A//e de ont/eed-genees-en heelkindige

werken.... Vol. 3. Amsterdam, 1744.

Graphic reproduction of Neerd. Taf. 85.

Etching with copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731)

[anatomist]. Rosamond Purcell (b. 1942)

[photographer]. Jar containing hand

grasping the rim of an eyesocket. Leiden,

early 1700s. Anatomical specimen.

Boerhaave Museum, Leiden. 1991.

Photograph. 19 x 13 1/4 inches. National

Library of Medicine.

Unknown anatomist. Rosamond Purcell (b.

1942) [photographer]. Dissected, cleared

and stained baby in a jar. Amsterdam,

early 20th century. Anatomical specimen.

Vrolik Museum, Amsterdam. 1995. Graphic

reproduction of a photograph. National

Library of Medicine.

Unknown anatomist. Rosamond Purcell

(b. 1942) [photographer]. Dissected

hand with stretched tendons, mounted

on a board. Dried anatomical specimen.

University of Valladolid, Spain, 18th or 19th

century. 1995. Graphic reproduction of a

photograph. National Library of Medicine.

Show-Off Cadavers: The Anatomy of Self

Display

Giulio Casserio (ca. 1552-1616)

[anatomist]. Odoardo Fialetti (1573-

1638) [artist]. In Adriaan van Spiegel

(1578-1625), De formato foetu.... Padua,

1627. Graphic reproduction of Tab. Mil.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Giulio Casserio (ca. 1552-1616)

[anatomist]. Odoardo Fialetti (1573-1638)

[artist]. Tabulae anatomicae.... Venice,

1627. Graphic reproduction of Tab. XV.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Giulio Casserio (ca. 1552-1616)

[anatomist]. Odoardo Fialetti (1573-1638)

[artist]. Tabulae anatomicae.... Venice,

1627. Graphic reproduction of Tab. XVI.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Giulio Casserio (ca. 1552-1616)

[anatomist]. Odoardo Fialetti (1573-1638)

[artist]. Tabulae anatomicae.... Venice,

1627. Graphic reproduction of Tab. VI.

Copperplate engraving. National Library of

Medicine.

Giulio Casserio (ca. 1552-1616)

[anatomist]. Josias Murer (1564-16309)

[artist]. De voc/'s auditusque organis historia

anatomica singular'! fide methodo. Ferrara,

1601. Graphic reproduction of Tab. XIII.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-1669)

[artist]. Tabulae anatomicae.... Rome,

1741. Graphic reproduction of Tab. XX.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-1669)

[artist]. Tabulae anatomicae.... Rome,

1741. Book open to page 38. Copperplate

engraving. 17 1/2 inches. National Library

of Medicine.

Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-1669)

[artist]. Unbound plate from Tabulae

anatomicae.... Rome, 1741. Tab. XVI.

Copperplate engraving. 15 1/4

x 10 5/8

inches. National Library of Medicine.

Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-1669)

[artist]. Unbound plate from Tabulae

anatomicae.... Rome, 1741. Tab. VII.

Copperplate engraving. 15 V4

x 10 5/8

inches. National Library of Medicine.

Pietro Berrettini da Cortona (1596-1669)

[artist]. Tabulae anatomicae.... Rome,

1741. Graphic reproduction of Tab. X.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

John Browne (1642-ca. 1702) [anatomist].

A compleat treatise of the muscles, as they

appear in the humane body, and arise in

dissection.... London, 1681. Book open

to page 98. Copperplate engraving. 13 1/2

inches. National Library of Medicine.

John Browne (1642-ca. 1702) [anatomist].

A compleat treatise of the muscles, as

they appear in the humane body, and arise

in dissection.... London, 1681. Graphic

reproduction of titlepage. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

John Browne (1642-ca. 1702) [anatomist].

Myographia nova.... Leiden, 1687. Graphic

reproduction of frontispiece. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

John Browne (1642-ca. 1702) [anatomist].

Myographia nova.... Leiden, 1687. Graphic

reproduction of Tab. XIII. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

John Browne (1642-ca. 1702) [anatomist]

A compleat treatise of the muscles, as

they appear in the humane body, and arise

in dissection.... London, 1681. Graphic

reproduction of Tab. XIII. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

John Browne (1642-ca. 1702) [anatomist]

A compleat treatise of the muscles, as

they appear in the humane body, and arise

in dissection.... London, 1681. Graphic

reproduction of Tab. XXVII. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

DREAM ANATOMY
The Cadaver's Perspective: Dream Anatomy

vs. Anatomical Reality

Interior of an unidentified classroom,

students posing next to three cadavers

and a skeleton. United States, ca. 1910.

Graphic reproduction of a photograph.

National Library of Medicine.

Anatomical Manikins and Diagnostic Dolls

Carved Ivory manikins from France,

Germany and Italy, ca. 1500-1700. Graphic

reproduction of a photograph. Alabama

Museum of the Health Sciences, The

University of Alabama at Birmingham.

X-Rays and the Cultural Imagination

The hand of Mrs. Wilhelm Roentgen: the first

X-ray image, 1895. In Otto Glasser, W/7he/m

Conrad Rontgen and the early history of

the Roentgen rays. London, 1933. Graphic

reproduction of a photograph. National

Library of Medicine.

Infant Growth and Development. U.S.

Department of Labor, Children's Bureau.

Washington, DC, ca. 1943. Graphic

reproduction of a photo offset poster.

National Library of Medicine.

John Sloan (1871-1951) [artist]

X-Rays. N.p., 1926. Graphic reproduction of

an etching. National Library of Medicine.

Children being fitted for shoes with the aid of

a shoe fluoroscope. "Deegan Demonstrates

How North Country Keeps Pace," In Shoe

and LeatherJournal 26 (1946). Graphic

reproduction of a photograph. National

Library of Canada.

X-ray of woman's foot, showing fitted shoe

Graphic reproduction of a photograph.

National Museum of Health and Medicine,

Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

GETTING REAL

REMOVING METAPHOR AND FANCY

FROM ANATOMY

MONUMENTAL BOOKS AND ANATOMICAL

PLEASURES

Anatomical Ideal: The Monumental Atlas

of Bernhard Siegfried Albinus

Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1697-1770)

[anatomist]. Jan Wandelaar (1690-1759)

[artist]. Tabulae sceleti e musculorum

corporis humani. London, 1749. Book

open to Tab IV. Etching with copperplate

engraving. 29 inches. National Library

of Medicine.

Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1697-1770)

[anatomist]. Jan Wandelaar (1690-1759)

[artist]. Tabulae sceleti e musculorum

corporis humani. London, 1749. Graphic

reproduction of Tab. I. Copperplate

engraving with etching. National Library

of Medicine.

Bernhard Siegfried Albinus (1697-1770)

[anatomist]. Jan Wandelaar (1690-1759)

[artist]. Tabulae sceleti e musculorum

corporis humani. London, 1749. Graphic

reproduction of Tab. III. Copperplate

engraving with etching. National Library

of Medicine.

Gautier d'Agoty's Amazing Technicolor

Dream Dissections

Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty

(1717-1785) [artist; printer]. Exposition

anatomique de la structure du corps

humain. Marseille, 1759. Book open to

Planche X. Color mezzotint. 35 1/2 inches.

National Library of Medicine.

Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty

(1717-1785) [artist; printer]. Exposition

anatomique des organes des sens.... Paris,

1775. Book open to PI. II. Color mezzotint.

17 1/2 inches. National Library of Medicine.

Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty (1717-

1785) [artist; printer]. Anatomie des parties

de la generation de I'homme et de la

femme. Paris, 1773. Graphic reproduction

of Plan. V. Color mezzotint. National Library

of Medicine.

Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty (1717-

1785) [artist; printer]. Anatomie des parties

de la generation de I'homme et de la

femme. Paris, 1773. Graphic reproduction

of Plan. VIII. Color mezzotint. National

Library of Medicine.

Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty (1717-

1785) [artist; printer]. Anatomie des parties

de la generation de I'homme et de la

femme. Paris, 1773. Graphic reproduction

of PI. I. Color mezzotint. National Library

of Medicine.

Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty (1717-

1785) [artist; printer]. Anatomie des parties

de la generation de I'homme et de la

femme. Paris, 1773. Graphic reproduction

of PI. II. Color mezzotint. National Library

of Medicine.

Beautiful Ugliness: Govard Bidloo and

the Turn to Anatomical Realism

Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) [anatomist].

Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) [artist].

Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams....

Amsterdam, 1690. Book open to T. 71.

Copperplate engraving with etching. 21

inches. National Library of Medicine.

Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) [anatomist].

Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) [artist].

Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams. . . .

Amsterdam, 1690. Graphic reproduction of

T. 30. Copperplate engraving with etching.

National Library of Medicine.

Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) [anatomist].

Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) [artist].

Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams. . . .

Amsterdam, 1690. Graphic reproduction of

T. 89. Copperplate engraving with etching.

National Library of Medicine.

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) [anatomist].

Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) [artist].

Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams. . . .

Amsterdam, 1690. Graphic reproduction of

T. 14. Copperplate engraving with etching.

National Library of Medicine.

Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) [anatomist],

Gerard de Lairesse (1640-1711) [artist].

Ontleding des menschelyken lichaams. . . .

Amsterdam, 1690. Graphic reproduction of

T. 88. Copperplate engraving with etching.

National Library of Medicine.

William Hunter (1718-1783) [anatomist].

Jan van Riemsdyk (fl. 1750-1788) [artist].

The anatomy of the human gravid uterus.

Birmingham, 1774. Graphic reproduction

of Tab. VI. Copperplate engraving. National

Library of Medicine.

Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777)

[anatomist]. C. J. RoUinus [artist], /cones

anatomicae. . . Vol. 2. Gdttingen, 1756.

Graphic reproduction of Fascicle II, Lectori

S, Figurae I and II. Copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777)

[anatomist]. C. J. RoUinus [artist], /cones

anatomicae. . . Vol. 2. Gdttingen, 1756.

Graphic reproduction of Fascicle III, Tab. V.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Casting the Artist Aside: The Anatomy

ofJohn Bell

John Bell (1763-1820) [anatomist; artist]

Engravings of the bones, muscles, and joints,

illustrating the first volume of the anatomy

of the human body. 2d ed. London, 1804.

Book open to page 133. Etching. 10 l/A

inches. National Library of Medicine.

John Bell (1763-1820) [anatomist; artist]

Engravings of the bones, muscles, and joints,

illustrating the first volume of The anatomy

of the human body. 2d ed. London, 1804.

Graphic reproduction of Plate VII. Etching.

National Library of Medicine.

Another Reality: The Colorized

Human Project

fer §

cc

Paolo Mascagni (1755-1815) [anatomist].

Antonio Serantoni (1780-1837) [artist].

Anatomia universale.... Florence, 1833.

Book open to Strato Primo Tavola

Paricolare I. Overprinted and hand-colored

copperplate engraving. 18 inches. National

Library of Medicine.

Paolo Mascagni (1755-1815) [anatomist].

Antonio Serantoni (1780-1837) [artist].

Unbound plate from Anatomia universal. . . .

Pisa, 1823. Viscera Tabula VI. Overprinted

and hand-colored copperplate engraving.

28 v2 x 39 V4 inches. National Library of

Medicine.

Paolo Mascagni (1755-1815) [anatomist]

Antonio Serantoni (1780-1837) [artist]

Anatomia universale.... Florence, 1833.

Graphic reproduction of Visceri Tav. XX.

Overprinted and hand-colored copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Paolo Mascagni (1755-1815) [anatomist]

Antonio Serantoni (1780-1837) [artist]

Anatomia universale.... Florence, 1833.

Graphic reproduction of Strato Terzo Tav. X.

Overprinted and hand-colored copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

John Lizars (17879-1860) [anatomist].

W. H. Lizars (1788-1859) [artist; engraver].

Unbound plate from A system of anatomical

plates of the human body.... Edinburgh, ca.

1825. Plate I. Hand-colored copperplate

etching. 18 1/4

x 11 1/4 inches. National

Library of Medicine.

John Lizars (17879-1860) [anatomist].

W. H. Lizars (1788-1859) [artist; engraver].

A system of anatomical plates of the human

body.... Edinburgh, ca. 1804. Graphic

reproduction of Plate LXXXIV. Hand-colored

etching. National Library of Medicine.

John Lizars (17879-1860) [anatomist].

W. H. Lizars (1788-1859) [artist; engraver].

A system of anatomical plates of the human

body.... Edinburgh, ca. 1825. Graphic

reproduction of Plate IX. Hand-colored

etching. National Library of Medicine.

John Lizars (17879-1860) [anatomist].

W. H. Lizars (1788-1859) [artist; engraver].

A system of anatomical plates of the human 173

body.... Edinburgh, ca. 1825. Graphic

reproduction of Plate I. Hand-colored

etching. National Library of Medicine.

Wilhelm Braune (1831-1892) [anatomist].

C. Schmiedel (fl. mid-1800s) [artist].

Topographisch-anatomischer atlas nach

durchschnitten an gefrorenen cadavern ....

Leipzig, 1872. Graphic reproduction of Tab.

III. Chromolithograph. National Library

of Medicine.

Wilhelm Braune (1831-1892) [anatomist].

C. Schmiedel (fl. mid-1800s) [artist].

Topographisch-anatomischer atlas nach

durchschnitten an gefrorenen cadavern....

Leipzig, 1872. Graphic reproduction of Tab.

IA. Chromolithograph. National Library of

Medicine.

Jean Baptiste Sarlandiere (1787-1838)

[author]. Systematized anatomy; or, Human

organography. New York, 1837. Book open

to Plate XV. Chromolithograph. 14 inches.

National Library of Medicine.

DREAM ANATOMY
George Viner Ellis (1812-1900)

[anatomist]. George Henry Ford (1809-

1876) [artist]. Illustrations of dissections

in a series of original coloured plates, the

size of life, representing the dissection

of the human body.... London, 1867.

Graphic reproduction of Plate XXV

Chromolithograph. National Library of

Medicine.

Francis Sibson (1814-1876) [anatomist].

William Fairland (fl. mid-1800s) [artist].

Medical anatomy.... London, 1869.

Graphic reproduction of Plate XXI.

Chromolithograph. National Library

of Medicine.

Francis Sibson (1814-1876) [anatomist].

William Fairland (fl. mid-1800s) [artist].

Medical anatomy.... London, 1869. Graphic

reproduction of PI. IX. Chromolithograph.

National Library of Medicine.

VISIONARY AND VISIBLE

DREAMING ANATOMY IN MODERNITY

Dissection Scenes and Fancies: Anatomical

Frontispieces and Title Pages

Giulio Casserio (ca. 1552-1616)

[anatomist]. Anatomische tafeln....

Frankfurt, 1656. Graphic reproduction

of frontispiece. Copperplate engraving.

National Library of Medicine.

Bernardino Genga (16369-17349)

[anatomist]. Charles Errard (16099-1689)

[artist]. Anatomia per uso et intelligenza del

disegno ricercata . . . . Rome, 1691. Graphic

reproduction of frontispiece. Copperplate

engraving. National Library of Medicine.

Floriano Caldani (1772-1836) [anatomist].

Cajetano Bosa [artist]. Tabulae anatomical

ligamentorum corporus humani.... Venice,

1803. Graphic reproduction of frontispiece.

Copperplate engraving. National Library

of Medicine.

Francesco Bertinatti (fl. mid-1800s)

[anatomist]. Paolo Morgari (fl. mid. 1800s)

[artist]. Elementi di anatomia fisiologica

applicata alle belle arti figurative. Turin,

1837-1839. Graphic reproduction of

frontispiece. Lithograph. National Library

of Medicine.

Dreaming Art Anatomy: Fine Art and

Anatomical Representation

Jacques Gamelin (1739-1803) [artist].

Nouveau recueil d'osteologie et de

myologie.... Toulouse, 1779. Book open to

plate titled Orate ne intretis in tentalionem.

Etching. 223/4 inches. National Library of

Medicine.

Jacques Gamelin (1739-1803) [artist].

Nouveau recueil d'osteologie et de

myologie.... Toulouse, 1779. Graphic

reproduction of portrait of Gamelin. Etching.

22 3/4 inches. National Library of Medicine.

Jacques Gamelin (1739-1803) [artist].

Nouveau recueil d'osteologie et de myologie.

Toulouse, 1779. Graphic reproduction of PI.

28. Etching. National Library of Medicine.

Jacques Gamelin (1739-1803) [artist].

Nouveau recueil d'osteologie et de myologie.

Toulouse, 1779. Graphic reproduction of

crucifixion study. Etching. National Library

of Medicine.

Francesco Bertinatti (fl. mid-1800s)

[anatomist]. Paolo Margari [artist]. Elementi

di anatomia fisiologica applicata alle belle

arti figurative. Turin, 1837-1839. Graphic

reproduction of Tav. Vila. Lithograph.

National Library of Medicine.

Francesco Bertinatti (fl. mid-1800s)

[anatomist]. Paolo Margari [artist]. Elementi

di anatomia fisiologica applicata alle belle

arti figurative. Turin, 1837-1839. Graphic

reproduction of Tav. IXa. Lithograph.

National Library of Medicine.

■|PBP"HP

•<T

Jean-Galbert Salvage (1770-1813)

[anatomist; artist]. Anatomie du gladiateur

combattant, applicable aux beaux arts....

Paris, 1812. Book open to Planche Ire.

Two-layer copperplate engraving, color.

23 1/2 inches. National Library of Medicine.

The People's Anatomy: Dreaming the Body

in Popular Medicine

Frederick Hollick (1818-ca. 1875) [author].

The origin of life: a popular treatise on the

philosophy and physiology of reproduction,

in plants and animals, including the details

of human generation.... New York-St.

Louis, 1845. Graphic reproduction of

portrait of Hollick. Lithograph, from

daguerrotype. National Library of Medicine.

Edwin Hartley Pratt (1849-1930) [author].

Frederick Williams [artist]. Trie composite

man as comprehended in fourteen

anatomical impersonations. 2d ed. Chicago,

1901. Graphic reproduction of plate facing

page 95. Lithograph. National Library of

Medicine.

EXHIBITION CHECKLIST
Henry Hall Sherwood (1769-18479)

[author]. The motive power of the human

system, with the symptoms and treatment of

chronic diseases.... New York, 1841. Book

open to page 13. Wood engraving. 8

1/2

inches. National Library of Medicine.

Mary S. Gove (1810-1884) [author].

Lectures to ladies on anatomy and

physiology. Boston, 1842. Book open to

frontispiece. Wood engraving. 7

v2 inches.

National Library of Medicine.

Edward Harris Ruddock (1822-1875) and

George P Wood (fl. 1880s) [authors].

Vitalogy; or, Encyclopedia of health and

home.... Vol. 1. Chicago, 1907. Book open

to frontispiece: View showing divisions of

the brain according to Phrenology. 9

3/4

inches. Chromolithograph. National Library

of Medicine.

Dr. Franke [author]. Anatomischphysiologischer atlas des menschen ....

Berlin, 1891. (Repackaged version of J.T.

White, White's physiological mannikin.

New York, 1889.) Chromolithograph on

cardboard. 34 1/2 by 23 1/4 inches. National

Library of Medicine.

Dreaming the Industrial Body: Fritz Kahn's

Modernist Physiology

Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [artist]. Der

mensch als industriepalast. Stuttgart, 1926.

Chromolithograph. 37 1/2 x 19 inches.

National Library of Medicine.

Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author; artist].

Man in structure and function.... Vol. 1.

New York, 1943. Book open to page 82.

Relief halftone. 91/2 inches. National Library

of Medicine.

Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author; artist].

Der mensch; bau und funktionen unseres

korpers, allgemeinverstandlich dargestellt.

Zurich, 1948. Book open to page 297.

Relief halftone. 10 inches. National Library

of Medicine.

Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author; artist].

Das leben des menschen; eine volkstumliche

anatomie, biologie, physiologie und

entwicklungsgeschichte des menschen. Vol.

2. Stuttgart, 1926. Book open to Tafel XIII.

Two-color relief halftone. 10 1/4 inches.

National Library of Medicine.

Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author; artist]. Der

mensch gesund und krank, menschenkunde

1940.... Vol. 2. Zurich-Leipzig, 1939. Book

open to page 471. Relief halftone. 10

inches. National Library of Medicine.

Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author]. Das

Leben des Menschen.... Vol. 2. Stuttgart,

1926. Graphic reproduction of Tafel XXXIII.

Photo offset. National Library of Medicine.

Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author, artist].

Das leben des menschen. Vol. 5. Stuttgart,

1931. Graphic reproduction of page 53.

Relief halftone. National Library

of Medicine.

Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author, artist].

Man in structure and function.... Vol. 1.

New York, 1943. Graphic reproduction of

page 266. Relief halftone. National Library

of Medicine.

Fritz Kahn (1888-1968) [author, artist].

Man in structure and function.... Vol. 1.

New York, 1943. Graphic reproduction of

page 267. Relief halftone. National Library

of Medicine.

Reuniting the Divided Self: Katherine Du

Tiel's Art ofAnatomical Identity

Katherine Du Tiel (b. 1961) [artist]. Inside/

Outside: Muscle/hand. San Francisco,

1994. Photograph: © Katherine Du Tiel.

40 x 30 inches. National Library of

Medicine.

Katherine Du Tiel (b. 1961) [artist]. Inside/

Outside: Lymphatic System. San Francisco,

1994. Photograph: © Katherine Du Tiel.

40 x 30 inches. National Library of

Medicine.

Katherine Du Tiel (b. 1961) [artist]

Inside/Outside: Cardiovascular system. San

Francisco, 1994. Graphic reproduction of a

photograph: © Katherine Du Tiel. National

Library of Medicine.

Katherine Du Tiel (b. 1961) [artist]

Inside/Outside: Back. San Francisco, 1994.

Graphic reproduction of a photograph:

© Katherine Du Tiel. National Library

of Medicine.

The Visible Human Project

Visible Human Project Images. Graphic

Reproduction of photographs. National

Library of Medicine.

Dream Anatomies: The Art of the

Visible Human

Suspended Self Portrait. Carolyn Henne

(b. 1960) [United States]. Sculpture 175

installation, 2001. Courtesy of the artist.

Body Scanner. Jussi Angesleva (b. 1977)

[Finland]. Interactive installation, 2001.

Collection of the designer.

The Visible Human as Atlas Holding the

World. Alexander Tsiaras (b. 1963) [United

States]. Animated hologram, 2002.

National Library of Medicine.

The Visible Human Plexi-Book: Male. Created

by the Exploratorium. San Francisco.

Hinged Transparencies in Plexiglas, 2000.

National Library of Medicine.

The Visible Human Plexi-Book: Female.

Created by the Exploratorium. San

Francisco. Hinged Transparencies in

Plexiglas, 2000. National Library of

Medicine.

Anatquest. Multimedia installation, 2002.

Created by the National Library of Medicine

DREAM ANATOMY

FURTHER READING

Svetlana Alpers, The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1983).

Andrea Carlino, Books of the body: Anatomical ritual and Renaissance learning; trans.

John Tedeschi and Anne C. Tedeschi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

Mimi Cazort, Monique Kornell, K.B. Roberts, and National Gallery of Canada, The ingenious

machine of nature: Four centuries of art and anatomy (Ottawa: National Gallery of

Canada, 1996).

Ludwig Choulant, trans, and ed. Mortimer Frank, with Fielding H. Garrison and Edward C.

Streeter, History and bibliography of anatomic illustration in its relation to anatomic

science and the graphic arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1920).

Andrew Cunningham, The anatomical renaissance: The resurrection of the anatomical

projects of the ancients (Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1997).

Lorraine Daston, "Objectivity and the escape from perspective," In Mario Biagioli, ed.,

The science studies reader (New York: Routledge, 1999).

& Peter Galison, "The image of objectivity," Representations 40 (1992): 81-128.

Martin Kemp, Visualizations: The nature book of art and science (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 2000).

& Marina Wallace, Spectacular bodies: The art and science of the human body from

Leonardo to now (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000).

Alexander Nemerov, The body of Raphaelle Peale: Still life and selfhood, 1812-1824

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

CD. O'Malley, Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564 (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1964).

Deanna Petherbridge, L.J. Jordanova, Royal College of Art, Mead Gallery, City Art Gallery

(Leeds), The quick and the dead: Artists and anatomy (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1998).

Ruth Richardson, Death, dissection, and the destitute (2d ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 2000).

K.B. Roberts and J.D.W. Tomlinson, The fabric of the body: European traditions of anatomical

illustrations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

Michael Sappol, A traffic of dead bodies: Anatomy and embodied social identity in nineteenthcentury America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

Jonathan Sawday, The body emblazoned: Dissection and the human body in Renaissance

culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).

Steven Shapin, The scientific revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996)

Barbara Maria Stafford, Body criticism: Imaging the unseen in Enlightenment art and

medicine (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991).

, Artful science: Enlightenment, entertainment, and the eclipse of visual education

(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994).

Bette Talvacchia, Taking positions: On the erotic in Renaissance culture (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2001).

Gretchen Worden, The Mutter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (New York:

Blast Books, 2002).

193. Detail, Jacques Fabien Gautier d'Agoty (1717-1785) [artist; printer].

Anatomie des parties de la generation de I'homme et de la femme. Paris,

1773. PI. I and II. Color mezzotint. National Library of Medicine.
(an)

JJ^SJNELL/f

7/ w/

©"' l^eproolHeTior^of cu drawing rr£de by D-^.V/kuivpiv r®

proffessor of^atorny. flrxLLE . Cern\a r\.y .Jnk*\ frmiV1*1 Pl\ofofcmpW

Tfiis trU^AfJ /^amv/el HAS APPEARED BEFORE

y^LL JHE Leading C oNtiNe NTAL PHYSICIANS

—

& fiOJABLY ®—

Qeh. Obeyedi cinmr^ Pj^oeessoj^ D^B*^DELE8Ert.CiEHEiH>lAE.r+<E and

P^OFESSOJ^S D*. Yit^cHow, Weixhej^MjeKocjI GturtLT, Westp*a.l EuleMburg

KPR.T£. Jut-Ul* MEr£H.,Buscn,TA^E Ij^AEL, VVXl^LOMOKT P^Y rv.VFFE^A.TH . ETCETJ^.ETC,
CREDITS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

DIRECTOR

Donald A. B. Lindberg, M.D.

National Library of Medicine

DESIGN

Riggs Ward Design, L.C.

Richmond, VA

The Visible Human as Atlas Holding the

World

Alexander Tsiaras, Anatomical Travelogue

New York, NY

SENIOR ADMINISTRATORS

Betsy L. Humphries

Deputy Director

National Library of Medicine

Donald W. King, M.D.

Deputy Director for Research and Education

National Library of Medicine

Jane Bortnick-Griffith

Deputy Director for Policy Development

National Library of Medicine

PROJECT STAFF

Elizabeth Fee, Ph.D.

Project Director

National Library of Medicine

Patricia Tuohy

Head, Exhibition Program

National Library of Medicine

Michael Sappol, Ph.D.

Exhibition Curator

National Library of Medicine

Elizabeth Mullen

Exhibition Coordinator

National Library of Medicine

Margaret Hutto

Exhibition Registrar

National Library of Medicine

Jiwon Kim

Exhibition Educator

National Library of Medicine

EXHIBITION FABRICATION

Exhibits Unlimited, Inc.

Alexandria, VA

SPECIAL SUPPORT

Michael Ackerman, Ph.D.

Head, Office of High Performance and

Computing Systems

Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical

Communications

National Library of Medicine

Kathleen Gardner Cravedi

Deputy Director, Office of Communication

and Public Liaison

National Library of Medicine

Michael North

Head, Rare Books and Early Manuscripts,

History of Medicine Division

National Library of Medicine

Paul Theerman, Ph.D.

Head, Images and Archives, History of

Medicine Division

National Library of Medicine

CONTEMPORARY ARTWORK

Body Scanner

Jussi Angleseva

Finland

Suspended Self-Portrait

Carolyn Henne

Richmond, VA

The Visible Human Plexi-Books

Michael Brown, The Exploratorium

San Francisco, CA

Inside/Outside Series Photographs

Katherine Du Tiel

San Francisco, CA

Anatomical Specimen Photographs

Rosamond Purcell

Medford, MA

SPECIAL APPRECIATION

Anne Altemus, Lister Hill National Center for

Biomedical Communications

Joseph Charuhas, Office of Communication

and Public Liaison

Rachel-Ray Cleveland, History of Medicine

Division

Joseph Fitzgerald, Lister Hill National Center

for Biomedical Communications

Judy Folkenburg, Office of Communication

and Public Liaison

Troy M. Hill, Lister Hill National Center for

Biomedical Communications

Robert Mehnert, Office of Communication

and Public Liaison

Melanie Modlin, Office of Communication

and Public Liaison

Jill Newmark, History of Medicine Division

David Osborne, Office of Administrative

Management Analysis Services

F. David Pair, Office of the Director, National

Institutes of Health

Young Rhee, History of Medicine Division

Kevin Schlesier, History of Medicine Division

ENHANCED VESALIUS TURNING THE PAGES

ANDANATQUEST

194. Hermann Welcker (1822-1897) [artist]. The Anatomical

Puzzle. Boston, ca. 1870. Broadside. National Library of Medicine.

Annette Strupp-Adams, Lister Hill National

Center for Biomedical Communications

Mike Caisse, Lister Hill National Center for

Biomedical Communications

DREAM ANATOMY
James C. Charuhas, Lister Hill National

Center for Biomedical Communications

Flo Dwek, United States Department of

Health and Human Services

Linlan Edwards, Ph.D., Lister Hill National

Center for Biomedical Communications

Jinghong Gao, Lister Hill National Center for

Biomedical Communications

Donald P Jenkins, Ph.D., Lister Hill National

Center for Biomedical Communications

Bill Leonard, Lister Hill National Center for

Biomedical Communications

Sheila Levy, Lister Hill National Center for

Biomedical Communications

Tom Neuse, Lister Hill National Center for

Biomedical Communications

Glenn Pearson, Ph.D., Lister Hill National

Center for Biomedical Communications

Amir Razi, Ph.D., Lister Hill National Center

for Biomedical Communications

James Seamans, Lister Hill National Center

for Biomedical Communications

Karen Steely, Lister Hill National Center for

Biomedical Communications

Ronald M. Summers, M.D., Ph.D.,

Department of Radiology

Mi Young Toh, Lister Hill National Center for

Biomedical Communications

George R. Thoma, Ph.D., Lister Hill National

Center for Biomedical Communications

ADDITIONAL THANKS

Melissa Alexander, The Exploratorium, San

Francisco

Jason Andrews, Riggs Ward Design

Gregory Bargeman, Woodrow Wilson Senior

High School

Roxanne Beatty, History of Medicine

Division

David Cantor, Ph.D., National Library of

Medicine

Margaret Kaiser, History of Medicine

Division

Lillian Kozuma, History of Medicine Division

Patricia Carson, Office of the Director

Carol Clausen, History of Medicine Division

Omar Echegoyen, History of Medicine

Division

Friends of the National Library of Medicine

Ashley Fullerton, Riggs Ward Design

Ben Garber, Computer Training and

Consulting

Helen Garton, Office of Computer and

Communications Systems

Robert Glass, End Result

Stephen Greenberg, Ph.D., History of

Medicine Division

Tim Harper, Riggs Ward Design

Walter Hickel, Ph.D., History of Medicine

Division

Betsy Humphreys, Division of Library

Operations

Alice Krasinski, The Exploratorium, San

Francisco

Jason Lamb, Riggs Ward Design

Jan Lazarus, History of Medicine Division

James Main, Ph.D., Lister Hill National

Center for Biomedical Communications

Charleen Moore, Ph.D., University of Texas

Health Science Center, San Antonio

National Library of Canada

Alexander Nemerov, Ph.D., Yale University

Susan Nsangou, Office of Acquisition

Management

Tabitha Oglesby, National Museum of Health

and Medicine

Elias Papatheodorou, Anatomical Travelogue

Kim Pelis, Ph.D., Uniformed Services

University of the Health Sciences

Karen Pitts, History of Medicine Division

Sita Reddy, Ph.D., Smithsonian Institution

Michael Rhode, National Museum of Health

and Medicine

Kym Rice, Museum Studies Program, The

George Washington University

Karen Riggs, Office of Acquisition

Management

Robert Riggs, Riggs Ward Design

Darrell Robertson, Exhibits Unlimited, Inc.

Elizabeth G. Rosso, Division of Library

Operations

Alberta Sandel, Office of the Director

Sanders Museum Services

Rex Schuler, Office of Computer and

Communications Systems

Kevin H. Spruill, Quotient Systems Group

Thomas Stewart, Exhibits Unlimited, Inc.

J.D. Talasek, National Academy of Sciences

Alain Touwaide, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar

Felicia Torchiano, Office of Administrative

Management Analysis Services

Elizabeth Tunis, History of Medicine Division

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Mai Venson-Metcalf, Division of Library

Operations

Brent Ward, Riggs Ward Design

Belle Waring, History of Medicine Division

Ruth Westervelt, Riggs Ward Design

Patricia Williams, Division of Library

Operations

Theodore E. Youwer, Office of Administrative

Management Analysis Services