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.

History of Diabetes

Diabetes was known in Ancient Egypt, but only much more recently did we have really effective means for making it a livable disease.

The Diabetes Museum in Munich has a lot of examples of experimental syringes, insulin pumps, and information on the history of diabetes and its diagnosis and treatment.

Through them I also discovered the Diabetes Flame of Hope, eternally burning in Canada until a cure is found.

And here is the "Starvation Diet" for diabetics from 1915, found on the Smithsonian Institute website:

Creepy Dolls

HERE

Because Superheroes are still Superheroes in utero

This and much, much more from the artist Alexandre Nicolas featured in the blog Dexterina

All About That Bass--I mean Butt/Ass

"Like a round, shiny mirror, Kardashian’s butt reflects back to us our myriad cultural panics and anxieties"

It seems Salon is harkening back to an earlier trope whereby rounded mirrors did indeed reflect our worst sides:

From Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights

Many more instances can be found in German renaissance prints.

I'm afraid I can't remember the printers' names and "demon ass mirror" simply doesn't work well in search engines.

Self-Mummification/Sokushinbutsu

See the story by Ancient Origins, found via Cult of the Weird.

Tampons in Ancient Greece?

See the full story at Wonders and Marvels.

The Music of Alchemists

And another, with full instruments:

This is from Michael Maier’s 1617 Atalanta Fugiens

Volvelles, paper astrolabes, and weird medical stuff! Again!

From Architectural Intentions from Vitruvius to the Renaissance. Here are some neato pictures:

One Minute Puberty, in Animation

See the video in a Post by Grupo DeFato.

THE FIRST DAY OF MENSTRUATION:

Haunting Smells

This New Yorker article chronicles haunted houses that utilize smells in strange and disturbing ways.

Some excerpts:

New Yorker Quote of the Day: "Egner’s personal favorite haunted scent experience was another bait-and-switch scene: as visitors approached a dimly lit table, they could smell roast turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, and see dishes piled high with food—which turned out, on closer inspection, to be cured hog guts and other viscera. 'I’m sure that we ruined somebody’s Thanksgiving that year,' Egner told me gleefully."

But the only time that a smell has been toned down midseason was this year—and it was for the benefit of the staff rather than the visitors. “There’s a really strong cat-urine smell this year, and it is really sticking with us,” Egner said. “Our clothes, our hair … I have a dog, and he is very confused when I get home.”

Real Tales for Halloween

Well, tales might be not be the right word for these things. Certainly for this one about a grandfather and his grandson.

But the story about the meaning of grave iconography, not so much.

Or the one about last meals.

So there was this guy...

Yes, this guy. Atlas Obscura documented his torrid/horrid affair with a woman who died of tuberculosis. But the affair went on with his haphazard medical abilities...

Less Painful Births and the Controversy they Stirred

See this article on Twilight Sleep.

Ebola and epidemics of the past

This article has a short summary of medical progress and its relation to our current medical quandary.

Some excerpts:

Though the vaccine for smallpox was discovered by the British doctor Edward Jenner in the 1790s, it didn’t trigger a revolution in medical thinking. Until well into the 1850s, the onset of disease was still attributed to foul-smelling clouds of decomposed matter known as “miasmas,” and the most common remedy was to purge ill patients of supposed impurities until the body’s equilibrium was restored.

… Thirty-two ounces were drawn by lancet, while blisters were applied “to the extremities.” (A person giving eight ounces of blood today must wait two months before donating again.) The man finally told his doctors to stop. “Let me go quietly,” George Washington pleaded, and he did.

As Mark Twain said, "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't."

So let's all just go back and read The Andromeda Strain.

From The Chirurgeon's Apprentice

Skull-Shaping in Early Modern French Populations

Most people think of indigenous pre-Colombian South Americans when they think of skull-bandaging and shaping, but this article says that it was happening in rural France unto the modern era.

And apparently they've been doing this a while in France:

From LiveScience

Thanks CH!

New Game: Is That a Uterus?

Image from The New York Times, in an article on the book Cosmigraphics

Kate MacDowell's Porcelains

From Cult of the Weird

from Morbid Anatomy

Mammary Drink Dispensers

Kind of like the milk dispenser from A Clockwork Orange:

The Pill and Its Politics

"By Sanger’s time, modern medicine had improved upon the crocodile dung ancient Egyptians used as vaginal plugs and the lemon half Casanova recommended as a cervical cap — but not by much."

See the NY Times review of Jonathan Eig's 'The Birth of the Pill'

Philly Hussies of Yore

"This young and beautiful creature is as snug a lump of flesh and blood as ever man pressed to his bosom." And so on...

READ IT ALL

The Funny Docs

From The Quack Doctor. To read the book, go HERE

Like Having X-Ray Specs

Plenty of videos HERE.

My favorite is the one of a baby nursing:

Bestiality, Monstrosity, and Livestock

Recently an Argentinian family was accused of having sex with a goat after it was born with a "human head."

Strangely, this goat looks kind of familiar to me. It looks a lot like this misshapen calf from Reformation polemical broadsheets:

It was dubbed "the monk calf" and was used as an argument that God disliked what the Catholic church was doing: e.g. the luxurious architectural projects and indulgences (essentially a get-out-of-hell-free-but-it-costs-money card). Others on the catholic side said it was meant to symbolize the monstrosity of Luther himself. 

My Boy Builds Coffins

By Florence and the Machine:

BEAUTY CHALLENGE:

1. Look in the mirror after you shower, no makeup, no hairstyle

2. Think: Am I beautiful?

3. Imagine yourself with Steve Buschemi eyes

4. Blink

5. Look again: You do not have Steve Buschemi eyes. This is good.

6. Wonder: But Steve Buschemi is a great actor. Could I be a great actor?

7. Make faces in the mirror like you're acting

8. Play a David Bowie song and sing in the mirror

9. Fuck the mirror, keep singing Bowie. It's hard to dance and sing in a bathroom

10. This is fun. Avoid mirror, it's boring. Unless you're putting on Bowie makeup. Then I recommend the Life on Mars look.

Some weirdly cutesy and disturbing videos

The Woman Who Scratched Into Her Brain and other real-life stories of horrific medical problems

The Itch from the New Yorker:

One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.”… She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.

Doctor Links a Man’s Illness to a Microwave Popcorn Habit from The New York Times

Heated diacetyl becomes a vapor and, when inhaled over a long period of time, seems to lead the small airways in the lungs to become swollen and scarred. Sufferers can breathe in deeply, but they have difficulty exhaling. The severe form of the disease is called bronchiolitis obliterans or “popcorn workers’ lung,” which can be fatal…. The man told Dr. Rose that he had eaten microwave popcorn at least twice a day for more than 10 years.

“When he broke open the bags, after the steam came out, he would often inhale the fragrance because he liked it so much,” Dr. Rose said. “That’s heated diacetyl, which we know from the workers’ studies is the highest risk.”

A Medical Mystery Unfolds in Minnesota from The New York Times

On Nov. 28, Dr. DeVries’s boss, Dr. Ruth Lynfield, the state epidemiologist, toured the plant. She and the owner, Kelly Wadding, paid special attention to the head table. Dr. Lynfield became transfixed by one procedure in particular, called “blowing brains.”

As each head reached the end of the table, a worker would insert a metal hose into the foramen magnum, the opening that the spinal cord passes through. High-pressure blasts of compressed air then turned the brain into a slurry that squirted out through the same hole in the skull, often spraying brain tissue around and splattering the hose operator in the process…. “You could see aerosolization of brain tissue,” Dr. Lynfield said… As a result, Dr. Lynfield said the investigators had begun leaning toward a seemingly bizarre theory: that exposure to the hog brain itself might have touched off an intense reaction by the immune system, something akin to a giant, out-of-control allergic reaction.