Butts and things, part 1

This series of images chronicles my fascination with the rather frank manner in which medieval illustrators dealt with medical issues of the southernmost reaches.

More Wacky Bloomsbury Quotes

I've been doing some research on the Bloomsbury Group recently for an upcoming exhibition, and I can't help running across some rather salacious commentary. I put my first one up early in the blog, but they just keep coming:

"I spent a night with Saxon not long ago...I was immensely impressed by his bachelor apparatus. I think he is the most masterly man I know. He has complete control over his tea, his coffee, his chess, his books, his cat..." - Virginia Woolf

"Elsie had said she did hope I wasn't tired - which meant, I felt, she hoped I wouldn't lose my virginity or something like that." - Virginia Woolf


Lydia fashioned a tender, affectionate language of arousal in her humorous, transliterated Russian, quite free of English prurience or smut. She wrote of ‘gobbling’ and ‘regobbling’ him, ‘detaining infinitely our warm wet kisses’, ‘tasting’ his ‘buttons’, ‘warming’ him with her ‘foxy lips’, or saluting his ‘slender’ and ‘subtle’ fingers.

Morbid Anatomy: Introducing the Morbid Anatomy Bookstore!

Morbid Anatomy: Introducing the Morbid Anatomy Bookstore!

Thanks to Natalie Dee: www.nataliedee.com

Obstetric Flapbook

A very cool flapped book showing the growing belly of a pregnant woman:



from http://www.ranzcog.edu.au/collections/library.shtml

The Early Modern Fart

People farting in the pope's general direction, 1545:

Extreme Surgical Instruments

Supposedly to treat a skull fracture. Or make one?



Tooth key. This is why people didn't want to go to the dentist.







Imaginary gynecological instruments for use on mutant women from the movie Dead Ringers.




Quite possibly the inspiration for A Clockwork Orange.

X-Ray Vision

Unfortunately, I was too busy in the real world to properly celebrate Dia de los Muertos in cyberland.
Here is some pretty heavy evidence proving the major awesomeness of skeletons:




The Killers - Bones

The Raconteurs - Salute Your Solution

Kaiser Chiefs - Every Day I Love You Less and Less

BONES intro
Music by The Chemical Brothers

HOUSE intro
Music by Massive Attack

Historical Pornography - Who Gives a...

Recently looking for anatomical images, the Wellcome Library search engine decided to expand it's idea of 'anatomy', bringing up some fantastically interesting 17th to 19th century images of Middle Eastern and Indian erotica.

These are listed as gouache drawings, in a the same style as some manuscript miniatures, and are supposedly from India in 18--?. Thank you, Captain Vagueness.

Avert your eyes if you would rather not see disembodied flying genitalia.

A Sample of Haeckeliana

From Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur.

Best known for teaching the modern world a lesson about taking personal style a little too far when illustrating comparative embryology - and in turn giving anti-evolutionists a tiny bit of so-called forgery to add to their arsenal.

But he also brought a unique sense of fantasy to the world of sponges, fungi, and anemone, among other things.

An Offering the Gods Can't Refuse

Here are some wacky Roman votive offerings to the god Asclepius asking him to heal them or as thanks for his help otherwise. It's kind of like "Dick in a Box," but without the box. Not recommended for use in other situations.

Worst Pregnancy Ever

Rather than getting just a baby, this woman seems afflicted with both intense despair and possibly necrotizing fasciitis.

From a 19th-century Persian manuscript showing the female viscera, arteries, and gravid womb.

Eating In?

Don't let food get in the way of your anatomy - now you can have both!

Hello Kitty, Hello Kidney

Fritz Lang's Got Nothin' on Fritz Kahn

Fritz Kahn's seminal industrial anatomy poster Der Mensch als Industriepalast reimagined by a contemporary artist and animator:

Leonard Baskin's The Anatomist, 1952

What Not To Do, Ladies Edition

On early 20th century contraception -

"there is no doubt a teapot and a tube of macaroni aren't very efficient syringes, and that Lysol mixed in equal quantities with water produces great pain."
-from the letters of Carrington, 1919

Also, the uterus should not be handled as a rugby ball.

Taxidermists Gone Wild