Darwin's Barnacles

From the OU History of Science Blog

Vénus endormie

Sleeping Venus (1944) by Paul Delvaux, who was inspired by the Spitzner Museum of anatomy.

More on the Spitzner Collection.

The Erotics of Electric Eels

The 'electric stroke' and the 'electric spark': anatomists and eroticism at George Baker's electric eel exhibition in 1776 and 1777.

Plumb C.

Source

Abstract

In 1776 and 1777 five living electric eels exhibited in London became a sensational spectacle that appealed to anatomists, electricians and connoisseurs of erotica. George Baker's exhibition made visible the 'electric spark' of the electrical eel and a series of experiments were both witnessed by and participated in by members of the Royal Society and the metropolitan elite. Some participants even grasped the eels firmly in their hands and felt the 'electric stroke' of the eel in addition to observing the spark. In their observation of the electric eel some of these spectators transposed the vivid electric spark from the sphere of electricians and anatomists into that of satirical and erotic literature. Here the erotic electric eel proliferated in the literature and the eel took on quite different connotations that nonetheless were reliant on readers knowledge and experience of the exhibition, experiments and the preoccupations of anatomists. George Baker's electric eel exhibition of 1776 and 1777 is then instructive in exploring the production and circulation of knowledge in Georgian Britain. The story of the electric eel in Georgian culture charts the creation of the electric spark and stroke as objects of observation and encounter, their exhibitionary context, and finally their divergent meanings as the electric eel became erotically charged for a metropolitan masculine elite.

Endeavour. 2010 Sep;34(3):87-94. doi: 10.1016/j.endeavour.2010.06.003. 

From The Wonder In Us, 1921

Bryan Nash Gill’s relief prints of tree cross sections 

From Corvidae Corvus and the NY Times

The Yesteryears of Chemistry Sets

See The New York Times article and SLIDESHOW.

From the Museo Galileo

The Female Inspiration for the CPR Dummy

via Radiolab

"the figures of Mary and Elizabeth are each inset with crystal-covered cavities through which images of their infants may originally have been seen."

Dickens' Taxidermy of Love

From The Vault at Slate

Scholarly Article Quote of the Day

"a customer at Seba’s sale purchased a lot that contained a “piece of a penis, artfully prepared” by Ruysch, a preparation of intestines, a book, and amole skeleton for the sum of 23 guilders. In 1713, Bidloo’s “most charming mole skeleton” was sold for 4 guilders 10 stuivers. Human intestines “decorated with wax and mercury and a corium humanum” were also available for 1 guilder 10stuivers. A “penis siccatus” fetched 1 guilder and 2 stuivers together with “two testicles injected with mercury.” As part of a separate lot, several “penes viriles etcanini” were purchased for 14 stuivers, even though a dog’s baculum was also added. Adding together Bidloo’s mole skeleton, intestines and penis, the totalamount is 7 guilders 2 stuivers, and it also includes an extra corium humanum and the two testicles. Discounting the additional book on Seba’s sale, Ruysch’sspecimens were still worth three times as much as Bidloo’s."

From A Museum of Wonders or a Cemetery of Corpses? The Commercial Exchange of Anatomical Collections in the Early Modern Netherlands by Daniel Margocsy in Silent Messengers, 2011

Maurice Ravel's Bolero and Brain Decay as a Creative Catalyst

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2012/jun/18/unraveling-bolero/

Art, Death, and Censorship

On Sweden, Art, and Consent to Use Human Remains

Ask a Mortician about Zombies!

Disturbing things to look at

Here.

Jacopo Ligozzi at the Louvre, via The Macabre and the Beautifully Grotesque

Pop-Up Apotheosis

Animated Monk

From Radiolab

If you listen long enough, like a few seconds, you get to the pooping duck.

My newest research adventure came to being when I noticed that my favorite flap anatomies contained imagery found in Rosicrucian texts.

Temple of the Rosy Cross

So, this leads to all sorts of craziness. Check out Robert Fludd, Athanasius Kircher, and Michael Maier.

Thin Nimbus

Cool stuff HERE

The Etymology of the Genitals

from io9

Archaeologists v. Prop Skulls

via io9

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pre-Columbian skull at the British Museum

And the Mitchell-Hedges skull in question:

Mummified Vampire Heart

From Propnomicon

Glassman

From MS-N

© Jaume Plensa
Glassman, 2004