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In the late 19th century, the legal status of the anatomical specimen was only slowly evolving into its modern form. Not yet regulated by legislation, specimens were subject to rampant commodification and were exhibited, collected, bought, and sold, internationally as well as locally. This article considers the status of anatomical preparations at a moment when medical school curricula were fast becoming standardised, surgical techniques increasingly refined, and methods for preserving the body perfected. Focusing on foetal remains, I explore how the use of anatomical specimens mediated between the well-established, if still controversial, practice of dissection and an increasing emphasis on the visual as a privileged mode of constructing the biomedical body. Through close analysis of specimens in British and American collections, I trace the shifting meanings, value, and significance attributed to anatomical preparations in this era. Linking foetal specimens to the medicalisation of pregnancy, contemporary discoveries in embryology, and growing debate around abortion, I argue that the emerging concept of foetal personhood challenged and inflected how specimens were understood, highlighting their hybrid nature as both potential human subjects and objects of knowledge. Through this encounter with death, I argue, viewers were invited to comprehend and articulate new notions of ‘life’ itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This column discusses the Anatomy Act 1977 (NSW) and its regulatory environment. The column begins with examining the history of anatomy regulation in the United Kingdom and Australia. It then goes on to analyse the history of the current anatomy regulation in New South Wales, pointing out areas for reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" is considered one of the greatest paintings of Dutch Artist Rembrandt which probably shows the anatomical dissection of the hand vividly probably for the first time on a canvas along with the demonstration of the surgical anatomy by the Praelector Dr. Nicolaes Tulp to fellow surgeons and surgical trainees. The painting has been subjected to various scrutiny and debate by the present researchers for wrongful depiction of the anatomy of the hand muscles, and there were omissions and commissions by Rembrandt. Nevertheless, Rembrandt's painting of "The Anatomy Lesson of Nicolaes Tulp" probably gave direction in understanding muscles and their attachments for future anatomy and surgery textbooks. This painting might also be the first-ever depiction of the diabetic gangrenous limb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While almost everyone practising surgery in India and indeed around the world recognises the pioneering contributions of Sushruta towards establishing surgery as an invaluable modality of treatment and often refer to him as the 'Father of surgery', his earliest contributions in the field of anatomy have not attracted similar attention. The fact that in his 'Sushruta Samhita', there is an exclusive section dedicated to the study of human anatomy by the name of 'Sarira Stahna' is not so well known. In the days, 600 years before the birth of Christ, when the human body after death was considered sacred by the prevailing religious texts or 'Shastras', not to be desecrated by knife but respectfully cremated on a pyre, how Sushruta performed the dissections and documented the anatomy of not only the adult human but also the foetus in various stages of development is an amazing example of the earliest scientific research ever conducted in the field of anatomy. This paper attempts to briefly trace the history of anatomy and Sushruta's contribution to this field. It also dwells in the lesser-known arena of an indigenous simulation laboratory devised for surgical training by Sushruta way back in 600 B.C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carl Florian Toldt was an Austrian anatomist who made meaningful contributions worldwide and defined what is one of the most important surgical landmarks in abdominal surgery. Through his research studies, the embryologic dissection plane known as the "White Line of Toldt" represents an important anatomical landmark that helps to mobilize either the ascending or descending colon. His career spanned over 45 years, beginning in Verona and continuing to Prague and Vienna. He was an author of several innovative books and scientific articles regarding micro- and macroscopic anatomy. In addition, he received numerous recognitions and prizes for his work, making him an essential figure in the medical scientific community. Even a street in Vienna, Karl-Toldt-Weg, is named in his honor. The purpose of this historical article is to celebrate and honor Toldt 100 years following his death, remembering his scientific contributions to the medical and surgical fields and giving thanks for his numerous accomplishments. This article brings light to the man behind the eponym. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To discover the widest collection of anatomo-pathological findings published in the XVII century, Theophile Bonet's Sepulchretum sive Anatomia Practica (1679), the forerunner of Morgagni's De Sedibus et Causis Morborum (1761). Particular attention has been paid to the paragraphs relating to otology and audiology. Method: Section 19 of Book I of the Sepulchretum (entitled De Aurium Affectibus) contains the description of all the ears pathologies found during autopsies performed at that time. Results: The annotations in this section provide an idea of the concepts and the knowledge that physicians had of otological and audiological syndromes in the XVII century. Conclusion: The Sepulchretum was fundamental in the development of modern medicine, as demonstrated by the similar treaties that followed Bonet's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to document the historical conceptualization of the inner ear as the anatomical location for the appreciation of sound at a continuum of frequencies and to examine the evolution of concepts of tonotopic organization to our current understanding. Primary sources used are from the sixth century BCE through the twentieth century CE. Each work/reference was analyzed from two points of view: to understand the conception of hearing and the role of the inner ear and to define the main evidential method. The dependence on theory alone in the ancient world led to inaccurate conceptualization of the mechanism of hearing. In the sixteenth century, Galileo described the physical and mathematical basis of resonance. The first theory of tonotopic organization, advanced in the seventeenth century, was that high-frequency sound is mediated at the apex of the cochlea and low-frequency at the base of the cochlea. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, more accurate anatomical information was developed which led to what we now know is the accurate view of tonotopic organization: the high-frequency sound is mediated at the base and low-frequency sound at the apex. The electrical responses of the ear discovered in 1930 allowed for physiological studies that were consistent with the concept of a high to low tone sensitivity continuum from base to apex. In the mid-twentieth century, physical observations of models and anatomical specimens confirmed the findings of greater sensitivity to high tones at the base and low tones at the apex and, further, demonstrated that for high-intensity sound, there was a spread of effect through the entire cochlea, more so for low-frequency tones than for high tones. Animal and human behavioral studies provided empirical proof that sound is mediated at a continuum of frequencies from high tones at the base through low tones at the apex of the cochlea. Current understanding of the tonotopic organization of the inner ear with regard to pure tones is the result of the acquisition over time of knowledge of acoustics and the anatomy, physical properties, and physiology of the inner ear, with the ultimate verification being behavioral studies. Examination of this complex evolution leads to understanding of the way each approach and evidential method through time draws upon previously developed knowledge, with behavioral studies providing empirical verification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with the thirteenth century, the papacy has exerted an important role in the development of anatomy and medical sciences through the protection and support provided to anatomists, who were in most cases the personal physicians of the popes as well. The work is intended to be a lesson of anatomy of Papal tiara, presenting the most important contributing popes, the anatomists–physicians whom they supported and protected and the relations between papacy and medical sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reconstructs the reception history of the illustrations of Andreas Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica (1543) by tracing how they were copied, pirated, and plagiarized from the sixteenth century to today. Curiously, Early Modern printers never reused the original woodblocks, even though they were available for sale. Instead, publishers commissioned new, smaller, and corrected illustrations that imitated, but did not exactly replicate, the original woodcuts. As I argue, Early Modern medical publishers engaged with images by continually trying to emulate and improve upon them. It was only in the eighteenth century, when the Fabrica ceased to become a textbook for practicing physicians, that its images became cult objects that needed to be replicated exactly. It was in this era that the original woodblocks were rediscovered and then used to print new editions of the Fabrica. Curiously, William Ivins, Jr., the renowned print scholar, came up with his theory of exactly repeatable pictorial statements when he became engaged with the 1934 re-edition of the Fabrica's images, the last edition to rely on these woodblocks. It is claimed here that his theory of pictorial statements is a reflection of how modern publishers engaged with the Fabrica's images, but misrepresented how those images were used in the Early Modern period. Bruno Latour's work on immutable mobiles drew its inspiration from the work of Ivins. Consequently, a reassessment of Ivins's claims about the history of printing is also a reassessment of Latour's claims about the role of inscriptions in the emergence of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on artist, sculpture, architect and anatomist Leonardo da Vinci's significant contributions to human anatomy. It chronicles how da Vinci started working on artistic anatomy as attested by the Saint Jerome painting and the series of anatomical studies that are mainly based on animal dissections. It also mentions the different scientific topics studied by da Vinci that includes the dissection of a centenarian and anatomical studies postures.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) contributed to the study of the nervous system. His earliest surviving anatomical drawings (circa 1485-93) included studies of the skull, brain, and cerebral ventricles. These works reflected his efforts to understand medieval psychology, including the localisation of sensory and motor functions to the brain. He was also the first to pith a frog, concluding that piercing the spinal medulla causes immediate death. After a 10-year interval in the early 1500s Leonardo resumed his anatomical studies and developed a method to inject hot wax into the ventricular system, creating a cast that showed the shape and extent of the ventricles. During this period he also progressed in his understanding of the anatomy of the cranial nerves. Besides being the first to identify the olfactory nerve as a cranial nerve, his dissections showed him that contrary to previous theories, the nerves do not converge on the lateral or third ventricles. Leonardo also performed detailed studies of the peripheral nervous system. Although his discoveries had little influence on the development of the field of anatomy, they represent an astonishingly sharp break from the field that had seen little if any progress in the previous 13 centuries. His work reflects the emergence of the modern scientific era and forms a key part of his integrative approach to art and science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I want to argue that the Vienna School of Medicine and especially the Viennese Brain Anatomy had an impact on the formation of the Austrian positivism. I argue that Carl von Rokitansky's (1804–1878) doctrine that psychological phenomena must be translated into anatomical facts and Theodor Meynert's (1833–1892) theory of brain functions served as one basis for the formation of the Austrian positivism. In this sense, two of the main early positivistic thinkers, Ernst Mach (1838–1916) and Richard Wahle (1857–1935), used Meynert's brain theory to argue for a bundle view of the Self. Friedrich Jodl (1849–1914) also thought about his theory, and even Moritz Schlick (1882–1936) who demanded a 'reduction of the psychology to the brain physiology' grappled with this approach. Meynert, a scholar of Rokitansky, the founder of the Vienna School of Medicine, was a leading figure in the history of neurology and has made several significant contributions to this discipline. He argues that the Self does not exist from an anatomical point of view. As Richard Wahle tells us, Meynert's theory of the brain functions was widely accepted under the brain researchers by the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century. He makes clear that brain researchers did in common refer to Meynert's theory to explain psychical functions as brain functions. He says from their point of view there was no doubt about it. Mach talks about Meynert's theory in Erkenntnis und Irrtum. There he says that Meynert's brain theory explains the nature and conditions of the consciousness. Michael Hagner argues that Mach's "Das Ich ist unrettbar" is hardly imaginable without the cerebral embedding of the mental functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the physician Andreas Vesalius. Topics include the chair of surgery at the University of Padua and has accepted a position as physician to the imperial household of Charles V the Holy Roman Emperor, the transition of treatment of gunshot wounds from boiling oil to more benign concoctions for which the latter became famous, and death changed the course of the history of Western Europe.

The article discusses the decline of the medical profession in Germany during the Nazi era and the ethical issues associated with the publication of research by Nazi physicians, specifically the use of anatomic images depicting victims of the Holocaust. It explores the immorality of musculoskeletal experiments conducted by the Nazis at the Ravensbrück concentration camp in the country.

In 1845, a collection of 200 skulls was transferred from the prison in Ghent to the city’s university museum. For over a century, the skulls served various purposes. They were objects of curiosity, sources for phrenological and anthropological research, and anatomical teaching aids. After the Second World War, however, the collection was destroyed, condemned as a reminder of a past tainted by collaboration. In this article, we build on the history of the skulls to discuss (1) the polysemic nature of anatomical collections, as well as the limits of their adaptability, (2) the importance of the study of disposal and absent objects to historians of anatomy, and (3) the culturally-determined ethics of stewardship governing the contemporary conservation or disposal of anatomical collections from the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) can be called one of the earliest contributors to the history of anatomy and, by extension, the study of medicine. He may have even overshadowed Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), the so-called founder of human anatomy, if his works had been published within his lifetime. While some of the best illustrations of their time, with our modern knowledge of anatomy, it is clear that many of da Vinci’s depictions of human anatomy are inaccurate. However, he also made significant discoveries in anatomy and remarkable predictions of facts he could not yet discover with the technology available to him. Additionally, da Vinci was largely influenced by Greek anatomists, as indicated from his ideas about anatomical structure. In this historical review, we describe da Vinci’s history, influences, and discoveries in anatomical research and his depictions and errors with regards to the musculoskeletal system, cardiovascular system, nervous system, and other organs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the anatomical revolution that occurred during the sixteenth century that changed from a focus on theoretical learning to the privileging of firsthand experience, focusing on the human hands. Topics discussed include the book "De humani corporis fabrica libri septem" by anatomist Andreas Vesalius.

The article discusses the history of the eponym as a means to chart terrestrial and anatomical geography in the Renaissance. Topics discussed include the comparison of the human body to terrestrial geography being commonplace in the age of discovery in 16th and 17th century Europe, and the relation between early modern anatomy and cartography.

By the 1890s, placental arrangements had been documented macroscopically in lizards and fishes, but placental studies on such species lagged far behind research on mammals. In 1891, the biologist Ercole Giacomini (at the University of Siena, Italy) published the first histological analysis of a reptile placenta. Focusing on a placentotrophic lizard (Chalcides chalcides) with a morphologically complex placenta, Giacomini documented the histological and cellular bases for placental nutrient transfer and gas exchange. In conjunction with a follow-up study in 1906, he demonstrated that placental structure is correlated with function and can vary dramatically between related species. Giacomini's work was highly influential in showing that placentation in lizards had converged evolutionarily on that of mammals, while establishing reptile placentology as a highly promising area for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a story of how the late Italian physician, anatomist and professor of surgery Mondino de' Liuzzi reintroduced the study of human anatomy. The fundamental text of de' Liuzzi in the book "Anathomia" that contained the collected experiences from the ancient anatomist is explored. The description of the segmental dissection of the abdomen, the thorax, the cranium, and the extremities during his examination of human cadavers is also outlined in the paper.

Within the colonial setting of the Belgian Congo, the process of cutting the body, whether living or dead, lent itself to conflation with cannibalism and other fantastic consumption stories by both Congolese and Belgian observers. In part this was due to the instability of the meaning of the human body and the human corpse in the colonial setting. This essay maps out different views of the cadaver and personhood through medical technologies of opening the body in the Belgian Congo. The attempt to impose a specific reading of the human body on the Congolese populations through anatomy and related Western medical disciplines was unsuccessful. Ultimately, practices such as surgery and autopsy were reinterpreted and reshaped in the colonial context, as were the definitions of social and medical death. By examining the conflicts that arose around medical technologies of cutting human flesh, this essay traces multiple parallel narratives on acceptable use and representation of the human body (Congolese or Belgian) beyond its medical assignation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From student notes of the teaching of William de Congenis, at Montpellier ca. 1225, we can recognize that surgical education fitted not too uneasily into an academic environment at that moment, when universities and medical faculties were beginning to shape their institutional identity. But medical institutionalization over the next two hundred years operated in a variety of ways to strengthen rather than break down a nascent hierarchical distinction between medical and surgical learning. At Montpellier, medical masters acquired many surgical skills themselves and abandoned the most difficult operations to non-academic restauratores; surgeons per se were not part of the university. In the north Italian universities, Padua and Bologna, separate chairs of surgery did come into existence within medical faculties in the fourteenth century, yet surgical education never achieved more than second-class status there, and professors of surgery typically tried to move up into medical chairs; anatomy remained a medical subject until the beginning of the sixteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which topics within the issue are discussed which includes surgery in Renaissance, history of anatomy and history of philosophy.

We now know that cataract couching involves depressing an occluded crystalline lens to the bottom of the vitreous chamber, but from the time of Galen until the seventeenth-century cataracts were thought to be separate concretions arising between the crystalline lens and the pupil. From Antiquity through the Renaissance, the combination of visual theory in which the crystalline humor is the author of vision, and surgical experience--that couching cataracts restored some degree of sight--resulted in anatomists depicting a large space between the crystalline lens and the pupil. In the Renaissance, oculists--surgical specialists with little higher education or connections to learned surgery or medicine--overwhelmingly performed eye surgeries. This article examines how the experience and knowledge of oculists, of barber-surgeons, and of learned surgeons influenced one another on questions of anatomy, visual theory, and surgical experience. By analyzing the writings of the oculist George Bartisch (c. 1535-1607), the barber-surgeon Ambroise Pareé (1510-1590), and the learned surgeon Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente (1533-1619), we see that the oculists' understanding of the eye--an eye constructed out of the probing, tactile experience of eye surgery--slowly lost currency among the learned toward the beginning of the seventeenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late nineteenth century anatomists claimed a new technique -- slicing frozen corpses into sections--translated the three-dimensional complexity of the human body into flat, visually striking, and unprecedentedly accurate images. Traditionally hostile to visual aids, elite anatomists controversially claimed frozen sections had replaced dissection as the "true anatomy." Some obstetricians adopted frozen sectioning to challenge anatomists' authority and reform how clinicians made and used pictures. To explain the successes and failures of the technique, this article reconstructs the debates through which practitioners learned to make and interpret, to promote or denigrate frozen sections in teaching and research. Focusing on Britain, the author shows that attempts to introduce frozen sectioning into anatomy and obstetrics shaped and were shaped by negotiations over the epistemological standing of hand and eye in medicine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The anatomist's secret: Adolphe Burggraeve and the development of Belgian anatomy in the nineteenth century Lifelike and elegant preparations are often connected to an early modern anatomical tradition that had disappeared by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Anatomy's transformation at the end of the eighteenth century caused anatomists to tone down the elaborate decorations of anatomical preparations. However, some anatomists still prepared lifelike preparations in the nineteenth century. Adolphe Burggraeve enriched the cabinet of the university of Ghent with multiple lifelike preparations for which he received scientific credit. Contrary to contemporary scientific standards his injection technique remained a secret. Burggraeve linked his preparations to the work of Frederik Ruysch by cultivating the secrecy surrounding his injection method which added prestige to Burggraeve’s status. Moreover, he was able to connect lifelike preparations to contemporary scientific debates. We argue that estheticized anatomical preparations were still a relevant anatomical practice in Belgian anatomy in the first half of the nineteenth century as their display for a medical and non-medical audience allowed anatomists to gain scientific prestige while also developing a national scientific discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief history of topographical anatomy begins with Egyptian medical papyri and the works known collectively as the Greco-Arabian canon, the time line then moves on to the excitement of discovery that characterised the Renaissance, the increasing regulatory and legislative frameworks introduced in the 18th and 19th centuries, and ends with a consideration of the impact of technology that epitomises the period from the late 19th century to the present day. This paper is based on a lecture I gave at the Winter Meeting of the Anatomical Society in Cambridge in December 2015, when I was awarded the Anatomical Society Medal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this essay is to explore the meaning of experience in William Harvey's work. I begin by expanding on Andrew Cunningham's argument (2002, 2003) that for Harvey, anatomy was an experience-based science of final causes. Observation and reason are united through experience (experientia) for Harvey, that is, by the repeated exercise of these capacities. Thus through the training and use of these abilities, Harvey thinks he can learn the final causes of living things and their parts. Harvey thinks that anatomy is the skill (facultas) by which one is able to make justified inferences to these causes. Finally, such inferences are based on a large set of rationally organized anatomical observations (historia), not upon direct, singular observations alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adaptive conversion of spiral arteries is essential for pregnancy physiology and incomplete conversion is associated with preeclampsia and intrauterine growth restriction. The anatomy of the uteroplacental circulation as well as the basic concept of nutrition of the foetus had been a matter of dispute among scientists for a long time. Based on the study of an autopsy of a pregnant uterus, Raissa Nitabuch was the first to give an accurate description of the uteroplacental circulation in her doctoral thesis in 1887. In this thesis, the fibrinous layer in the decidua was identified as site of detachment of the placenta from the uterine wall after delivery of the baby. Although this was only an accidental finding, as "Nitabuch membrane" this fibrinous layer up to this day is associated with her name. It is unclear, why the much more important findings on the uteroplacental circulation never were published in a scientific journal. Today the basic anatomy of the uteroplacental circulation is unquestioned. However, it remains largely unknown, that the first accurate description appeared as a doctoral thesis. In view of the ongoing investigations on function and regulation of uteroplacental circulation, there can be no doubt, that an original publication of the findings of Raissa Nitabuch in a scientific journal today would be a "Classic" deserving to be revisited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discusses the story behind the iconic painting in the history of medicine, "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" by artist Rembrandt van Rijn. It offers information on surgeon Nicolaes Tulp, who is depicted in the painting while subjecting the dead body of Aris Kindt, a robber. It mentions about the restoration of the painting in the late 1990s, in order to understand Rembrandt's artistic technique.

The article discusses the relation of anatomy to theatre performance in the Renaissance era. Topics include the relation of early modern anatomy to epistemology, the nature of dissections as public exhibitions, and the creation of anatomy theatres for such dissections. The writings of anatomist Charles Estienne are addressed in relation to the technique of dissection. The role of evidence and demonstration in anatomical theatre is discussed.

Purpose: The aim of this literary search was to chart the etymology of 32 selected human skeletal muscles, representative of all body regions. Methods: In researching this study, analysis of 15 influential Latin and German anatomical textbooks, dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, was undertaken, as well as reference to four versions of the official Latin anatomical terminologies. Particular emphasis has been placed on the historical development of muscular nomenclature, and the subsequent division of these data into groups, defined by similarities in the evolution of their names into the modern form. Results: The first group represents examples of muscles whose names have not changed since their introduction by Vesalius (1543). The second group comprises muscles which earned their definitive names during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The third group is defined by acceptance into common anatomical vernacular by the late nineteenth century, including those outlined in the first official Latin terminology (B.N.A.) of 1895. The final group is reserved for six extra-ocular muscles with a particularly poetic history, favoured and popularised by the anatomical giants of late Renaissance and 1,700 s. Conclusions: As this study will demonstrate, it is evident that up until introduction of the B.N.A. there was an extremely liberal approach to naming muscles, deserving great respect in the retrospective terminological studies if complete and relevant results are to be achieved. Without this knowledge of the vernacular of the ages past, modern researchers can find themselves 'reinventing the wheel' in looking for their answers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I describe the place of teleology in William Harvey's understanding of anatomy, drawing especially on his lecture and working notes from (roughly) the decade leading up to the publication of De motu cordis. Harvey understands the goal of anatomy to be universal, final causal knowledge of the parts of animals and their variations, articulated in terms of their actiones and usus. I then carefully trace the role of teleology in the De motu cordis, distinguishing (with Harvey) between his opinion "de motu & usu cordis" and "de circuitu sanguinis". I argue that in the De motu cordis Harvey provides teleological explanations of features of the heart and arteries and their variations in terms of the circulation of the blood, understood as the actio of the heart. In this way the De motu cordis clearly embodies Harvey's understanding of the teleological character of anatomical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the successful excavation project at Tel Magal, Israel recovering animal-bone remains from the Neolithic period, Wadi Raba and Early Bronze Age. The excavated animal bones were compared with the specimens from the Hebrew University Natural History Collection for modifications. The result of the examination of the animal bone remains for identification are also discussed.

Jiří (George) Procháska (1749–1820), a Czech anatomist, physiologist, and neuroscientist of the eighteenth century, ranks among the major figures of Czech and European cultural history. The works of Jiří Procháska, due to historical circumstances, were published mostly in Latin and only some in German. However, given that only one treatise was partially translated into English, the results of his extensive research activities are currently unavailable to the international scientific community. The achievements of Jiří Procháska undoubtedly belong to the major intellectual heritage of European science and certainly deserve attention as such, although his research reflected the time in which he lived and therefore has been reevaluated by later researchers. Undoubtedly, it is our duty not only to remember the work and legacy of Jiří Procháska, which significantly influenced the development of our knowledge, but also to try to critically assess his contribution in terms of today. This article surveys the important biographical events of Jiří Procháska’s life, taking into account the significance of his research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents information on the development of transcendental anatomy and teratology in Great Britain in the 19th century with special attention to the work of British anatomist Robert Knox. Other topics mentioned in this article include the embryo's development and possible abnormalities associated with monsters, evolution, and mental as well as cultural degeneracy.

Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century anatomy depended upon a variety of visual displays. Drawings in books, particularly expensive, beautiful and elaborately illustrated books that have been the objects of historians' fascination, were understood to function alongside chalk drawings done in classrooms, casual and formalized experience with animal and human corpses, text describing or contextualizing the images, and preserved specimens. This article argues that British anatomists of the late Enlightenment discovered and taught an intelligible, orderly Nature through comprehensive systems of display. These systems trained vision, and, taken as a whole, they can be used to understand a visual culture of science. Displays helped anatomists, artists and natural philosophers learn to see both the tiniest and the rarest of parts and an overall general plan of anatomy and relationship of parts. Each type of display was materially different from the others and each served to perfect human vision for a group of natural philosophers who valued sensory experience – primarily that of vision, but also that of touch – as the basis of learning. Together, these displays allowed the anatomist to see, in all of its dimensions, human nature, frozen in the ordered and unstressed state of fresh death, a comprehensible guide to life and its functions. A pedagogical context of use defined and bound such displays together as complementary parts of a unified project. A system of display stood in for Nature and at the same time represented her ordering by anatomists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The first anatomical lexicon was established in old Egypt, Alexandría by the priests who ritually offered all the parts of the human corpses to their gods. About 500 years b. C. studies of comparative anatomy began due to the physician Alcmeon of Croton, author of the text seriously starting the history of scientific pathology according to Laín Entralgo. It was only during the III century b. C. that dissections of human corpses began at the famous Alexandrian School of Medicine in Ptolemaic Egypt. During the Roman era and in high Middle Ages, physicians carried out anatomical studies in humans in order to dismiss or confirm poisoning suspicions or to extrapolate their flindings in animals (monkeys, pigs, etc) to humans. However, in low Middle Ages (XIV century), direct studies in human corpses were performed once again. These studies reached their pinnacle in the XVI century allowing the discovery of the lesser blood circulation and later of the greater blood circulation. The XVII century saw the coming of microscopic anatomy and the XVIII century witnessed the zenith of pathological anatomy. These studies developed during the following century into clinical-anatomical comparison. Today the help of technological studies is mandatory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1926 the anatomist Frederic Wood Jones toured the United States at the invitation of the Rockefeller Foundation. In 1924 the Foundation had set up a Division of Studies under the leadership of Edwin Embree with the brief to fund programmes under the title of ‘Human Biology’. Grafton Elliot Smith's Rockefeller-funded Institute of Anatomy based at University College London wished to be designated at the centre of the programme and was well placed to provide such leadership. In 1927 the Institute was informed that it had been unsuccessful and the project would be centred in Hawaii under the directorship of the Yale geologist Herbert E. Gregory. This article explores the role of Wood Jones' 1926 trip and the importance of anthropological disputes in that important decision. It also examines the role of Australian anatomy in the development of human biology in the inter-war years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article de-constructs and re-constructs the dynamic of a sixteenth-century political dispute between the Catholic Bavarian Duke Wilhelm V and the Protestant Saxon Elector August I. By focusing on the visual imagery which ignited the dispute, the paper explores sixteenth-century ‘ways of seeing’ and the epistemic role realistic images played in the production of knowledge about the natural world. While the peculiar dynamic of the affair is based on a specific understanding of the evidential role of images, the paper also argues that the wider socio-cultural context, in particular certain strategies of truth-telling, provide further clues as to the dynamic and closure of the affair. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Prior to the American Civil War, museums were enthusiastically promoted in the annual circulars of southern medical colleges as valuable aids to medical education. Using case history narratives, medical college circulars, and announcements, this article examines the social origins of the region's collections of anatomical and pathological specimens and explores the professional agents and organizations responsible for their maintenance and development. The article is also concerned with exploring the racial framework in which these bodies and specimens were sourced and displayed. The social relations embodied in natural history and medical museum collections, and the emerging specialism of "negro medicine," were all elements of a context that subordinated and objectified blackness, as well as permitting and legitimizing the exploitation of black bodies. Medical museums function as a key case study for examining power relations among physicians, slaves, and slave owners, as well as underscoring southern medicine's dependence on slavery for its development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts a comprehensive account of 'fibre medicine' elaborated by iatromechanists from c. 1700 to c. 1740. Fibre medicine, a medical theory informed by the notion of the fibre, has been neglected by medical historians despite the pivotal role played by the fibre in animal economy. Referring to a wide range of medical fields such as anatomy, physiology, pathology, therapeutics and life sciences, this paper elucidates the ways that the fibre serves as an indispensable concept for iatromechanists to establish their medical theories. This paper also highlights the metaphorical dimension of the fibre as an integral part of fibre medicine. In re-evaluating the concept of the fibre, this paper seeks to redress the neuro-centric view of eighteenth-century medicine, and attempts to locate the fibre body amidst the fundamental shift from humoralism to solidism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The De humani corporis fabrica [The Fabric of the Human Body], Basle, 1543, of Andreas Vesalius is deservedly famous as the first modern book of anatomy. A second edition was published in Basle in 1555, but little is known of Vesalius' activities after that date. This article discusses a recent find: Vesalius' own copy of the 1555 edition, heavily annotated in preparation for a never published third edition. Vesalius made hundreds of changes to the second edition, the great majority being stylistic, altering the Latin words but not the overall meaning. There are also changes to the plates to give greater clarity or to correct mistakes by the original block-cutter. There is little new anatomical material, although Vesalius continued to meditate about what he had earlier discovered. He shows no sign of being acquainted with the findings of others, like Colombo or Falloppia, that were published after he had moved his residence from Brussels to Spain in summer 1559, perhaps leaving this volume behind. The number of annotations shows Vesalius' passionate concern not only for accuracy but also for the most effective way of proclaiming his new anatomical message. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the work of French doctor André Du Laurens, focusing on his depiction of the lower spinal nerves as a horse's tail. Criticisms of Du Laurens' book "Historia anatomica humani corporis" are described, and the author notes Du Laurens' influence on the study of nerves in the spinal chord, highlighting Du Laurens' use of the term "cauda equina" (horse's tail). The relationship of of Du Laurens' use of the metaphor of a horse's tail in anatomy to the use of the term "pony tail" in describing hairstyles is discussed, and the author notes the inception of the pony tail style by British general William Cadogan.