Embalming Historical Figures

From www.medievalrobots.org/:

Placing the bodies of particularly revered or heroic figures on display has a long history. In medieval historical writing (including historical chronicle and epic poems), heroic warriors from Troy and Carthage were embalmed (sometimes with magical fluids) and preserved for eternity. Hector, the prince of Troy, was placed in the open, where his subjects could see him. In one account, the embalming fluid went in at the top of his skull, and then flowed through his veins into his extremities. 

According to many natural philosophers, a person could not be considered fully dead until decay or putrefaction occurred. So keeping Hector perfectly "fresh" actually meant keeping him partially alive. Kind of like Han Solo in carbonite, or Wesley in "The Princess Bride."

World's Most Awkard Taxidermy

Image borrowed from the comment from Ginger Snap

DO NOT TOUCH

And Victorian Anti-Masturbation Devices! from The Chirurgeon's Apprentice

Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves

'the body of a female masturbator might even create its own offspring, independent of human action. Physician G. A. Douglas argued in his book, The Nature and Causes of Impotence in Men, and Barrenness in Women (1758), that false conceptions could be caused by self-abuse. He suggested that women needed vaginal stimulation in order to make an egg descend. If a woman used “those shameful implements” to stimulate herself, she would produce an egg that would remain unfertilised and grow so that it resembled a pregnancy. Women, he warned, “should know this and tremble”.'

Once again from Wonders and Marvels

And for the song reference see Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin singing Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves.

And a great version by some goth dudes

How Romans Wiped Their Butts

Answer: A Sponge Stick!

For more, see HERE

The Smashing Pumpkins and Georges Méliès

For those who don't know, the Smashing Pumpkin's Tonight, Tonight video was based largely on the work of the early filmmaker Georges Méliès, after whom the ship carrying the music video's protagonists is named. Méliès' Voyage dans la Lune was the main inspiration:

La Sirène was another film that likely gave shape to the undersea scene

Méliès was made a fictional character in the recent book and movie Hugo. It also stars an automaton!

The History of Condoms

Condom made from animal gut. Courtesy of the Science Museum, London.

Read more on their website

The History of Menstruation by Helen King 
via Wonders and Marvels

Tampon from early 20th century. Courtesy the Science Museum, London.

More on this on their website.

Man-midwives of the 18th century used "a wooden statue representing a woman with child, whose belly was of leather, in which a bladder, full perhaps, of small beer, represented the uterus. This bladder was stopped with a cork, to which was fastened a string of packthread to tap it, occasionally and demonstrate in a palpable manner the flowing of the red-coloured waters. In short, in the middle of the bladder was a wax doll, to which were given various positions."

From Elizabeth Nihell, A Treatise on the Art of Midwifery (London, A. Morley) 1760

Cited in Roberta McGrath, Seeing her Sex: Medical Archives and the Female Body

Censoring Anne Frank's Revelations About Her Body

Out of respect, her father originally omitted certain sections of Anne's diary dealing with her discoveries as an adolescent woman. New versions of the diary reintegrate these into her text after it has become part of a literary canon--they no longer serve to infiltrate her memory as a girl, but to more fully expound on what she chose to write down, from the fear of being found to her first kiss and all of the life she led in-between, privately or with others. But this version has met with at least one opponent who doesn't want her daughter to read it and doesn't think it should be read in school.

Excerpts from The Guardian:

 "There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can't imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!" 

"until I was 11 or 12, I didn't realise there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn't see them. What's even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris....In the upper part, between the outer labia, there's a fold of skin that, on second thought, looks like a kind of blister. That's the clitoris."

"When you're standing up, all you see from the front is hair. Between your legs there are two soft, cushiony things, also covered with hair, which press together when you're standing, so you can't see what's inside."

Sexology Circa 1942: Vintage Anatomical Charts of the Male and Female Body, as Animated GIFs

Awesome find DCK!

Oh, Fashion. How unfashionable you are.

To see where this detail from the right is in the Bosch painting, look at the bottom of the third section of the triptych: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_by_Bosch_High_Resolution.jpg

The Pointer

From Jehan Cousin's Livre de Pourtraiture, 1608

Il Gabinetto Segreto: Roman Erotica in the Muzeo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples

Popes, Scandal, and Blood Transfusions

From Wikipedia:

Papist and other Catholic authors take pains to discredit the story of Innocent VIII's deathbed [by Stefano Infessura]. As the Pope sank into a coma, "the harrowing story was told that, at the suggestion of a Jewish physician, the blood of three boys was infused into the dying pontiff’s mouth (the concept of circulation and methods for intravenous access did not exist at that time). They were ten years old, and had been promised a ducat each. All three died." Historians of medicine note this event as the first recorded historical attempt at a blood transfusion.

Tiny Glass Seathings

The New York Times provides a great interactive section on tiny glass replicas of marine invertebrates from the 1860s:

 

Skeleton of teenage girl confirms cannibalism at Jamestown colony