Courtesan in Nine Stages of Decomposition

By Kobayashi Eitaku, ink and pigment on silk, c. 1870

More HERE

Glass and Chymistry

From the Corning Museum of Glass

Uncomfortable Footwear for Ladies Never Goes Out of Style

If you think high heels are bad, try chopines.

Artwork of Sarah Suppan

From her website HERE and a post by Street Anatomy HERE

Traveling Library (i.e. Jacobean Kindle)

More pictures HERE!

On the Flu

From the NY Times Flu Quiz:

The term influenza was first applied to the disease because early Europeans believed that the widespread nature of flu epidemics were caused by the movement of the planets, moon and stars. The word was adopted into English in 1743.

Doctors in 1918 tried various methods to cure patients of the flu. These included prescribing whiskey or cigars, asking them to gargle salt water, dousing patients with ice water or bleeding them. Some tried a surgical procedure to extract pus and blood from the chest cavity, however this procedure was almost always fatal.

Source: Iezzoni, Lynette. 1999. Influenza 1918: The Worst Epidemic in American History. New York, NY: TV Books, L.L.C.

Spinning a 17th-Century Globe

HERE!

Anatomy in Germany

From the Fembo Haus

From a book in the City Archives

From the Germanisches Nationalmuseum

Anatomy in Leuven

The Old Anatomy Theater in Leuven

From the Museum Leuven

Who Owns Your Casket in the Future?

Lee Harvey Oswald's coffin has brought up some interesting questions in terms of ownership of objects: read in the New York Times. A few excerpts below.

When the coffin was exhumed, it was too badly damaged to be reused, and Mr. Baumgardner, who also testified during the trial, kept it in a storage room in the funeral home for 30 years before putting it up for auction four years ago, according to news media accounts and court documents. He said his funeral home became the rightful owner of the coffin because no one else claimed it, and he believes the coffin should not be destroyed because it is “part of history.”

 ...

Mr. Oswald, who had gray hair and wore glasses, called the sale of the coffin “bad taste” in the video and described himself as its rightful owner. He has also said that he thought the coffin had been destroyed after the exhumation until he learned of the 2010 sale through the Nate D. Sanders Inc. auction house.