Pseudo-Anatomical Treasures at the Palmer

From the Palmer Museum of Art, Penn State University

Unicorn Update

Finally got to see the unicorn tapestries at The Cloisters in NYC. See a description of the botany here.

And the Met has way more here.

Tiny Reminders

From The Cloisters, NYC

You can't beat a cock and balls as graffiti

Fetus-kin

This is my tiny fetus pumpkin, which will shortly be inserted into a larger pumpkin and attached to it, perhaps with Twizzlers.

The Evolution of Evolution in Pictures

The March of Progress, first published by Rudolph Zallinger in 1965. Its over-simplified presentation of evolution is just as misleading as "whiggish" histories of science. Source: Wikimedia

See the story HERE

Durer's Rhino, Reenvisioned

From Scientific American

Preciously Horrific Moments

And friends: HERE

Sweetness

Ribeauville, France: Multicoloured honey which keepers believe was caused by bees feeding on residue from M&M sweets at a nearby biogas plant
From guardian.co.uk
Photograph: Vincent Kessler/Reuters

See my previous post with a similar color-coded wasp's nest from the Oxford Museum of Natural History

Pictures from Friends!

From the Museo Galileo courtesy of PK 

Marco d' Agrate, St. Bartholomew, c. 1562.

Duomo, Milan.

Automaton, c. 16th-17th century.

Museum of Decorative Arts, Castello Sforzesco, Milan.

Courtesy of SS

Funereal?

Vienna, Austria: A coffin inspired by René Magritte’s Perspective: Madame Récamier de David at the Funeral MuseumFrom guardian.co.uk
Photograph: Alexander Klein/AFP/Getty Images

Hand of a Master

Handrick Goltzius, Goltzius's Right Hand, 1588

Teylers Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands

That's right, he drew it himself. Supposedly, he fell into a fire as a small child and grabbed onto the coals. A maid or family friend bandaged him up, only to have his two fingers fuse.

Nonetheless, he was able to draw in ink and create extravagant engravings. His disfigured hand became one of the icons of Northern European prints, giving a sense of grace and legitimacy to prints by his students and many others beyond his artistic circle.

"Hearing pregnancy described as cheese-making gave a familiar texture to the body's transformations."

Laura Gowing, Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 4.

And p. 23

Note the quote, "Jokes about incontinence focus not on those women most likely to have bladder problems--mothers and older women--but on adolescents, whose leakiness is sexier"

Experiments for the Whole Family! Or not...

An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump by Joseph Wright of Derby, 1768

National Gallery, London

So in some Engine, that denies a Vent,

If unrespiring is some Creature pent,

It sickens, droops, and pants, and gasps for Breath,

Sad o'er the Sight swim shad'wy Mists of Death;

If then kind Air pours powerful in again.

New Heats, new Pulses quicken ev'ry Vein;

From the clear'd, lifted, life-rekindled Eye,

Dispers'd, the dark and dampy Vapours fly.

--"The Wanderer" by Richard Savage, 1729

More info here.

Hungry for Love?

Found in the Yale Medical Historical Library digital collections:

Didactic Tights

Reproduction Wheaton Medicine Bottles

Straubmuller Elixir: Tree of Life

and

Indian Vegetable Jaundice Bitters

Chief Wahoo's Electric Tonic

Body as Vessel

Get Reborn

Newborn kitten?

From a translation of Jacopo Berengario da Carpi's Isagogue Breves

Perhaps an early form of butt chugging?

Sometimes it's probably not that great to be king...

From A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya by Linda Schele and David Freidel

Quotes from "Midwifery, Obstetrics, and the Rise of Gynaecology"

"Waldung picked up on Dubois's comment that 'Woman abounds with a great quantity of blood'."

"They believed that, if menstruation did not occur, then t he surplus blood would come out through another orifice, or continue to build up in the body, putting pressure on different organs, until disease or even death resulted."

"Mercado...[helped] a virgin who, through no fault of her own, has a wide vaginal opening."

"Common to many [treatises on women] was the idea that women are wetter than men, and that this is turn results from the flesh throughout their bodies being of a softer and more spongy texture, absorbing more fluid from their diet. Glands 16 explains that women's bodies retain moisture because they are loose-textured, spongy, and like wool."

Funny Picture of Dude Holding Ancient Roman Brothel Tokens

LA Times reporter Jason Felch, who broke the story of the Getty's ownership of looted anqituities.

Midnight Snack

Are you up late at night thinking about your impending death?

Well now you have something to read, too.

Fetal Acrobatics

Charles Darwin's walking stick

Made of whalebone, ivory, and green glass. Classy, no?

"I do think that this filling of the vagina with traps, making a Chinese toyshop of it, is outrageous."

W. D. Buck, c. early 19th century

Menstrual blood can:

"turn wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seeds in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees falls off, the bright surface of mirrors in which it is merely reflected is dimmed, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives and bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison.” 

Pliny, Natural History, 7.15.46-65; trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: 1942), 2:549.

"Menstrual blood, in addition to the fact that it cures some quartan fevers, hydrophobia, epilepsy, elephantiasis, depression, madness, and many other similar pernicious illnesses, is not less worthy of being admired for numerous other effects; among other marvels, for example, it extinguishes fires, calms tempests, keeps away the danger of raging waters, expels every nuisance, unbinds spells, and puts evil spirits to flight." 

- Cornelius Agrippa (from the Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex). 

Bellmer also did some absolutely amazing erotic drawings that can be found in a few books on his general oeuvre.

More fistulas than you can shake a fist at

A great listen: Radiolab's episode called GUTS.

The best story is a historical one about a doctor that essentially kept experimenting on a guy who had a hole in his stomach. But it sounds way more interesting when they tell it.

From "Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften" of 1924