"Let’s Talk about Sex: Victorian Anti-Masturbation Devices"

From the Chirurgeon's Apprentice:

Deathly Art in Chicago

All images from the Art Institute of Chicago:

Rock out with your cock out (on display, in a jar)

Here's an article on how one (the only?) penis museum is looking for that one member to fill out its collection.

And thanks to AZ for letting me share so many of his posts in the last few entries!

The Quotable Elias

For those who have never read Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process, it recounts a number of rules for proper behavior in society over time.

Here are a few examples:

Donated Bodies

Check out this article on what happens to your body when you donate it to science.

And a creepy enough video introduction to dissecting cadavers:

Crystal Skull Face

Click below to see how forensic anthropologists create the terrifying face of the crystal skull vodka bottle:

Pucker up and think

Henry VIII--just a bad sperm donor?

Click the image to get the story:

Vesalius: Oops, I vivisected someone

From Katharine Park, "The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Renaissance Italy," Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Spring, 1994), p. 19.

Flappy things

On the exhibition Animated Anatomies

A Nowadays Passion Play

For those of you who are not aware, the city of Manchester, England decided to take a page from the playbook of tradition by staging a passion play--a theatrical performance of the last days of the life of Jesus. But this one was decidedly site- and sound-specific, featuring Mancunians covering well-known British bands.

Music and Brains

Fiona Apple - Every Single Night

Chance the Rapper - Brain Cells

Let's talk about sex

From Montaigne, Essays, III, ch. 5 (trans. George B. Ivez, Harvard University Press, 1925)

Cited in Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, ch. 5

The same chapter in Bakhtin mentions phallic bell towers and redesigning Paris with pudenda.

Oh good, Lady Pills

From the History of Medicine Collections at Duke University

Modern Votives

And another great post from Morbid Anatomy on Anatomical Votives:

Mappy Things

New Yorker article on The Allure of the Map, in literature and as a concept.

A blog appropriately called Strange Maps (like NY Times infographics, but, you know, maps, and some historical and fictional ones as well)

A map of England sharting on France:

More to come...

Who's on First? I mean Top?

from Carolyn Walker Bynum, "The Female Body and Religious Practice in the Later Middle Ages," Fragments of a HIstory of the Human Body, vol. 1.

Show Me Your Liver

Bronze sheep's liver with writing, known as the Liver of Piacenza. It was likely used by haruspex to read omens.

Take Another Little Piece

From Lapham's Quarterly

And if you are interested in the crazy adventures of Descartes' mortal vessel (and don't mind some major back history of Enlightenment philosophy) I recommend reading Descartes' Bones by Russell Shorto.

Thanks for the link, NS!

Deader than Dead

A Short Article on Holbein's Dead Christ in the Guardian is really simple, but if you want a more nuanced yet exciting and beautifully written article on the subject, look no further than Julia Kristeva's "Holbein's Dead Christ" in Fragments for a History of the Human Body vol. 1.

This blogger at Left Traces gives a little summary of her article and also connects it to a contemporary work of art playing on Dead Christ:

Moving Things

More HERE and HERE

POOPING DUCK

From a blog post HERE

Etruscan Votive Statue from the Getty

More HERE

Collage with poem from Hair magazine circa 1999

Dr. Seuss's Naked Ladies

A recent Bust article shows great images and summarizes the story written and illustration by the Doc himself.

Lady Bone Models

Women objectifying themselves by making themselves part of the perceived aesthetics of a product. And that product might be a giant skull.

HERE


Even better is a woman staring at Rasputin's preserved cock-and-balls:

Thanks PR!

Explaining Female Urination

Robots before "Robots"

Firstly, podcast #24 of Stuff You Missed in History Class

And secondly, the Medieval Robots Blog

Newly found blog

http://nsaxonanderson.com/anthropo-eccentric/

And more blood

On MENOTOXINS and how the ancient and early modern fears of menstruation revived in the 20th century.

And a semi-appropriate music video to go along with it:

Blood

The Latest in Anatomical Curiosity from Radiolab:

Blood

Mourning Rings

Many of these have tiny skeletons in enamel and/or paper under glass. Brilliant!

For more see the Yale Art Gallery

Sketches of Historical Curiosities

Images copied from Peter Dittmar, "Kleines Kunstkammer Lexikon," Die Weltkunst 83:70, 2013, pp. 38-45

The School of Venus

a 17th-Century Sex Manual

Museum Boerhaave 1

The Rijksmuseum, from Gross to Interesting

St. Roch is the patron saint of plague victims, and his plague sore is often seen being licked by a dog.

So Cambyses was a corrupt judge who was sentenced to be flayed due to his conduct. His son was his professional heir, so they hung his skin above his son's seat to assure that he would not become corrupt like his father.

Here is St. Thomas being all like, "no, really? Let me see... Oh my God that's gross... I mean, Holy Hell..." (all the while making a stink face.)

As you can read, SOMEONE MIGHT HAVE HID IN THIS BOX TO ESCAPE PRISON. Which is just badass.

Sweet automaton. And if you haven't had enough in terms of things that make drinking more fun, here you go:

There is a small die in the globe on the top (the actual bottom) of this cup. Whatever you roll, you have to drink.

It's like a flask, but for at home.

Creepy? I agree. And inaccurate, but the creepiness outweighs all science anyway.

"Geometria" with a great architectural updo

Man using a touchstone to determine metal quality

"unicorn" horns

Celestial globe