Rare drawings of human anatomy from centuries past

A fascinating piece of curation from Brain Pickings. Ten centuries of anatomy drawings covering everything from Civil War wounds to anti-tuberculosis flyers from China.

For the past 175 years, the The National Library of Medicine in Bethesda has been building the world’s largest collection of biomedical images, artifacts, and ephemera. With more than 17 million items spanning ten centuries, it’s a treasure trove of rare, obscure, extravagant wonders, most of which remain unseen by the public and unknown even to historians, librarians, and curators. Until now.

 

In the new book called Hidden Treasure. Several images from it were reproduced in the blog post, 10 Centuries of Visualizing the Body in Rare Archival Images.

I chose two to give you a taste: the first is an early sketch of our skeleton and muscles, the second is a Civil War-era surgical card.

The snapshots:

 

 

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