JF Ptak Science Books

Electro-IronPunk Centrifugal Birthing Machine--a Fantastically Bad Idea

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1500

I found this by accident, and needed to share it immediately, because in the splendid and chilly vastness of the infinite Encyclopedia of Bad Ideas, this entry would seem quite the poster child for such a stupendous effort--the mud to which all dust aspires. 

The centrifugal machine for human birth...its hard to even finish that sentence, let alone finish it without wincing. What could possibly go wrong, or right, with spinning a pregnant woman strapped like Hannibal Lechter on a spinning turntable?  

I think what we have here is the Vitruvian Woman of Bad Ideas relating to human birth, the patent described more fully in this great piece by Marc Abrahams (of the Annals of Improbable Research) in The Guardian, 2006). And how could the symbology of the thing get any weirder? It looks like this poor woman has her head resting on a stretched piece of animal skin, all of which is located on a cross--but since there is a person on it the medical device become a crucifix. And let's not forget the counterweights on either side of the governor, which in detail below are suspend to either side of the woman's head; and also the baby sack, for, well, catching the baby...

Image source:  Google Patents

And the excruciating, inexorable detail:

In their patent application, Blonsky and Blonsky explained the grievous and imaginary need:

"In the case of a woman who has a fully developed muscular system and has had ample physical exertion all through the pregnancy, as is common with all more primitive peoples, nature provides all the necessary equipment and power to have a normal and quick delivery. This is not the case, however, with more civilised women, who often do not have the opportunity to develop the muscles needed in confinement."--from the Blonsky patent.

"Therefore, wrote Blonsky and Blonsky, they would provide "an apparatus which will assist the under-equipped woman by creating a gentle, evenly distributed, properly directed, precision-controlled force, that acts in unison with and supplements her own efforts".--Marc Abrahams, quoting the Blonsky patent in The Guardian (referenced above).

 

 

 

The text of the patent report, below, in full:

The 47 Sins of Isaac Newton, as Recorded by Himself

JF Ptak Science Books     Post 1498

"Nabed Efyhik
Wfnzo Cpmfke'"--Issac Newton, ca. 1660

So begins this extraordinary work known as the Fitzwilliam Manuscript¹:  Isaac Newton's name, plus for words on two lines, which the Newton scholars suspect to be a key to a cipher.  It was purchased at a Sotheby auction by Maggs Brothers in 1936 for £180, and within the month found itself in the Fitzwilliam Museum.  What makes it fantastic--aside from having some mathematical/physical work by Sir Isaac in its 5,000 or so words--is the almost impossible inclusion of a list of what Newton could remember of the sins that he had committed.  He finds 47 transgressions within his memory.

It seems to me that listing the sins of people is nearly as old as writing, since the  absolutely overwhelming aspect of that practice is describing sin in general or, of course, the sin of others.  Or the judicial end, the sins of people have been listed and judged many millions of times for billions (or whatever) of offenses.  And certainly the listing or provocation or announcement of sin has been endless fodder for entertainment in the forms of story telling, theatre, novels, and so on.  Then, too, there's all of the religious indictment and beseeching for proclaiming sins for atonement. On the individual level for a living human, a famous person, it is extremely uncommon to find a highly personal listing like this, even whispered as they were into a notebook, Sir Isaac I am sure thinking as though this was almost as good as writing the sins in dust.  I wonder how he would feel, seeing people discussing them, like this? 

This transcribed list comes from the fantastic Newton Project,² site.

Newton (1642-1727) writing in about 1662 (and about 20 years old), and who was at Cambridge for a few years already, just prior to what was perhaps his most astonishing period of creativity, (and with the time of the Plague, just a few years in the future):

"Before Whitsunday 1662. 

"[Note:  Whitsunday,  the Sunday of the feast of Whitsun (or "White Sunday") or Pentecost int he Christian liturgical year, celebrated/observed seven weeks past Easter, the celebration too of summer, and the descent of the Holy Spirit on Christ's disciples (Acts of the Apostles chap 2.) ALSO Newton at this point is 20 years old.]

Vsing the word (God) openly
Eating an apple at Thy house
Making a feather while on Thy day
Denying that I made it.
Making a mousetrap on Thy day
Contriving of the chimes on Thy day
Squirting water on Thy day
Making pies on Sunday night
Swimming in a kimnel on Thy day
Putting a pin in Iohn Keys hat on Thy day to pick him.
Carelessly hearing and committing many sermons
Refusing to go to the close at my mothers command.
Threatning my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over them
Wishing death and hoping it to some
Striking many
Having uncleane thoughts words and actions and dreamese.
Stealing cherry cobs from Eduard Storer
Denying that I did so
Denying a crossbow to my mother and grandmother though I knew of it
Setting my heart on money learning pleasure more than Thee
A relapse
A relapse
A breaking again of my covenant renued in the Lords Supper.
Punching my sister
Robbing my mothers box of plums and sugar
Calling Dorothy Rose a jade
Glutiny in my sickness.
Peevishness with my mother.
With my sister.
Falling out with the servants
Divers commissions of alle my duties
Idle discourse on Thy day and at other times
Not turning nearer to Thee for my affections
Not living according to my belief
Not loving Thee for Thy self.
Not loving Thee for Thy goodness to us
Not desiring Thy ordinances
Not long {longing} for Thee in {illeg}
Fearing man above Thee
Vsing unlawful means to bring us out of distresses
Caring for worldly things more than God
Not craving a blessing from God on our honest endeavors.
Missing chapel.
Beating Arthur Storer.
Peevishness at Master Clarks for a piece of bread and butter.
Striving to cheat with a brass halfe crowne.
Twisting a cord on Sunday morning
Reading the history of the Christian champions on Sunday

Since Whitsunday 1662

Glutony
Glutony
Vsing Wilfords towel to spare my own
Negligence at the chapel.
Sermons at Saint Marys (4)
Lying about a louse
Denying my chamberfellow of the knowledge of him that took him for a  sot.
Neglecting  to pray 3
Helping Pettit to make his water watch at 12 of the clock on Saturday night

Notes:

1. From the website of the Newton Project (described following): "Miscellaneous notebook containing Newton's accounts for 1665-9, a series of increasingly complicated mathematical problems, and a highly revealing personal confession. At Whitsun 1662, Newton compiled a list of all the 47 sins he could remember having committed in his life, from stealing cherries to "threatning my [step]father and mother ... to burne them and the house over them". The accounts section charts the beginning of his study of alchemy in 1669, with purchases of books, materials and a furnace to equip the makeshift laboratory he set up in the grounds of Trinity College."

2. The Newton Project is the work of  Professor Rob Iliffe  (Director, AHRC Newton Papers Project) and Scott Mandelbrote (Fellow & Perne librarian, Peterhouse, Cambridge). 

A Backwards, Inside-Out, Oil + Iron Internet (1937)

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

I feel slightly queasy seeing this photograph, found in the August 1937 issue of Popular Science magazine--it seems to me to be a backwards, inside-out analog cyberpunk (without the cyber) variety of the internet, a robotic device moving people around from data bit to data bit, an oil and iron process of automatic info retrieval, moving the user to the information rather than the other way around.  The image does put me in mind of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, which renders info and other muck in a high-dystopian fashion with endless ducts and file cabinets, making things oppressively inaccessible in their accessibility.

And to some degree there's a little Spongebob similarity in there too, though without the iron nd metal part, just Mr. Squarepants and his cardboard filing cabinets for all of this thoughts and memories, serviced by smaller units of himself whop presumably have their own filing systems in their heads.  Filing cabinets, all the way down. 

There is a more-refined image of what is basically the same idea, found here in the fantastic bio-art of Fritz Kahn (1888-1968), who published his Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as an Industrial Palace or thereabouts) in Stuttgart in 1926.  Kahn is seen as a "modernist", which I guess is true; to me he is far more than that--he's "different".

In Charlie Chaplin's great 1937 Modern Times, there are no file cabinets and I don't think that there's any paper, just the results of vast mechanization:

And of course, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, made a little earlier, in 1927:

 And finally, an image of the semi-reverse of the gigantic filing system:  moving humans through mounds of paper not contained in file cabinets, stacked upon stacks of stacks.  Once everything is said and done, none of this info-sausage-factory seems very pretty.

 

 

Atom Bombs: the Game.

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1497

I do not know the precise date when displaying the death of children was used to sell detergent.  There were deep hints of a child's death in a Twilight Zone episode (selling Borax) in the ate 1950's, but in general I think that killing kids on television for story development and entertainment is more an '80's creation than anything else.  Children dying in stories on television had been verbotten, a non-starter, for decades; now kids die in Dr. House's hands and all over the rest of that wasteland place and there's barely a wrinkle in the entertainment continuum.

Killing children in literature is entirely different, and of course much older.  Given the overwhelmingly and horrible basis of the news reports of the Old Testament, I wonder what the great flood would've looked like on OT TV?  After all, it was reported that the creator did away with almost everything on Earth--men, women, and of course  every child and baby on the planet, drowned like rats in a bag, but without a bag--kids left to float away from their parents, and then drown, sinking into the cold black sea created by the very thing that created them.

Kids killing things in play is another matter, especially since it is done so for fun. I guess they smote or smitted things for time immemorial, but it wasn't until very recently, and mostly with the invention of the middle class and the creation of disposable income, that killing toys were sold to kids in stores. Toy guns and knives and other implements of destruction at least made whatever the kids were doing a face-to-face activity.  When the atomic bomb toys started to appear in the late  '40's, killing stuff took on the potential of worldwide destruction.  Of course I doubt that any kid playing with these atom bomb toys had an inkling of what it meant to use the weapon in the real world, but the appearance of atomic bomb toys--while not quite yet at the level of Auschwitz board games--is on the revolting side.  On the other hand the destruction of entire galaxies has been witnessed by kids in any number of movies and television programs, what with billions of living being killed in the process.

I don't know what the effect is of exposing children to mass killings in the name of grand theft auto, let alone opening apocalyptic floodgates by putting nuclear weapons within their reach.  It just isn't right.

Does these things, below, seem appropriate to you?  Take for example a simple matter in this detail from a U.S. Patent Office report for game pieces for a board game--the pieces were described; the game wasn't.  The inventor, Verne Sellers, provided tanks, artillery, an air power of some sort, a "shield", a general, a few undesignated items, and of course an atom bomb.  The atom bomb would make things all right. 

 

[Source: atomic bomb game pieces from US Patent and Trademark Office via Google Patents: http://www.google.com/patents/USD172810?dq=atom+bomb+game]

And then there is the "Safe, Harmless, Giant Atomic Bomb", which is something that is made to sound so much like nothing that it gives "nothing" a new meaning.

[Source: Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/electrichermit/atomic-age-america/]

 

Then this lovely thing, a small and cheap dexterity toy that places atomic destruction in the sphere of a semi-mindless time-killing toy, a real neutralizer to the significance of the thing it portrays:

  I can't imagine many people wouldn't feel some sort of sympathy for this gigantic King Kong, who looks up just in time to see the massive nuke falling on his head, personalizing the delivery system of mass destruction:

Total destruction as a game, or game piece; an oxymoronic trivial pursuit.

 

Questionable Quidity: the Preservation of Decay--Atomic Bomb Suits

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1486

Part of this blog's long series on Atomic and Nuclear Weapons

 

 Is there anything more revolting than this solitary, encapsulated,  iron maidenesque survival sarcophagus and its promised hope of survivability? 

Perhaps not.  This patent application for an individual survival suit from 1958 gives us something to think about, perhaps gives us the cause to imagine what the world would look like from the inside of that portable evacuation chamber (that had its own attache case for storage).

 

 

 

Another variant, from 1958, shows a handy, mobile triangular leaf-incinerator-like environment that you wheel into position, put on its side, and then crawl into and die:

 

The bomb(s) would go off, and there you would be, standing with your back against the wall, or laying in the gutter pressed against the curb, just another piece of the dead city, another piece of metal waiting to decay.  I'm not sure what is going on in this scene, which while being crude is still steeped in a high-creep factor.  I get the impression of slow time in these images, as though the atom-bomb-suited people have been there for a long time, though I suspect that we are seeing an urban area just after a blast.  It is a wincingly bad scene. 

 

(Why is it that when seeing Civil Defense films and etc from this period we see people ducking-and-covering from one bomb?  Since the great majority of Americans lived in one of the 75 "essential delivery acquisitions" areas (I forget now the source for this phrase) it was exceptionally unlikely that people would be dealing with a single acquisitions implement, since the Soviet stockpile of nuclear weapons would've been at probably half-par with the U.S., which at this point (1958 or so) would be around 18,000.)

 

Here's another example of some unusual thinking on surviving nuclear holocaust, 1958, only these--while solitary--are not terribly mobile, even if they did come with wheels. (Didn't it bother anyone that something that was supposed to prevent you from flying glass and bricks and the terrestrial ring of fire could be moved around on such tiny wheels?) They look more like waste receptacles.  Maybe that's what they would wind up being, if they were ever used for their intended purpose. 

[Source: Google patents, http://www.google.com/patents/US2827004]

And another atomic bomb "garment-like" thing--this looks like it might actually be useful on airplanes, because most people who die in crashes do so from smoke inhalation...but providing one of these per person would be a bad flying vibe, just like seat belts (so ferociously resisted by Mr. Iacocca) were seen by the car industry as an unnecessary reminder of how dangerous cars were/are).

[Source: Google patents, http://www.google.com/patents/US2827004]

Anyway, the only way these things might be useful in times of such an emergency as atomic holocaust would be as a burial shroud.  And since a bunch of people would (presumably) already be wearing them at the time of attack, the job of burying them would be that much less work, since they were already shrouded.  Of course, that's assuming (a) that people would or could be buried, and (b) that there was anyone left to do the burying. 

[Source: Google Patents, http://www.google.com/patents/US2683876]

 

 

Questionable Quidity: Fireworks Boxing

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick QUIDITY Post

 
Certainly in the history of creative chemistry there were more reasonable things to do than this.  But perhaps not, perhaps the folks in 1934 had come to the realization that the idea of creativity was spent, that there were not going to be any new, good ideas, that the era of reasoned inquiry was gone--and to celebrate, the sport of fire boxing was born. 

These realizations came in 1934, and 1935, and every year, before and since.  The struggle with or for creativity and genius is a second-by-second bout, and there is no doubt that the quidity of what passes for a "good idea" for x^x ideas must surely fill the middle of the infinite Encyclopedia of Stuff that Doesn't Make Sense. 

My guess is that the number of bad ideas stays a relative constant among humans.  The only difference over time is the number of humans having the bad ideas and the ways in which everyone hears about them. 

Note:

The guy on the left bears a small resemblance to Augustus Saint-Gauden's Adams Memorial (sometimes called "Grief"). 

Precursor to Zombie-Phone-to-Deadsville: the Telephone Medical Metal Detector "X-Ray"

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1495

Did President Garfield Die Because of Metal Bed Springs?

Thomas Edison famously took advantage of a naive reporter, telling the young man that he was working on an invention that would allow a person to telephone dead people--a story that was reported as true, and one which Edison (both thoroughly disgusted and joyful) helped to perpetuate to the day he died by simply not discussing the issue. (This story appears on this blog here.)

Much earlier, only five years after Alexander Graham Bell first patented and published his invention of the telephone, the device was used by Bell to do some very early electrical medical imaging.  The new President of the United States, James Garfield, had been shot by Charles Guiteau in Baltimore and Potomac Railway Station (on 2 July, 1881, after a lengthy period of semi-abstract stalking and planning) Station in Washington, D.C., receiving fatal wounds in July and which would cause his death later in September.  The problem was that at this point in the history of surgery it was  difficult to locate bullets in the body, becoming more so if the bullet took a non-straight course through the wounded.  Normally, in 1881, a doctor could for example use a device called  a Nelaton probe, a thin porcelain device (as opposed to most other probes, which were metallic) to help locate the embedded bullet.  But given the nature of Garfield's wounds, this was just not applicable, and the bullet escaped recognition from this and other probes.

Bell enters the scene with an electromagnetic invention, the induction balance, which he created to detect interference on a telephone line.  In the process of experimentation Bell recognized that the balance could be disturbed if the metal and battery-fueled probe came into contact with a piece of metal.--basically, the device was a medical metal detector. Bell resolved to use the device on Garfield, passing the probe along the President's body while another person listened to a telephone ear piece for the telltale "click" of a proximate metallic object.

Bell was not successful with this, or at least not so at this time, and the President died, succumbing to an infection, finally.  But Bell was able to perfect this instrument, something that stayed in use as the principal means of detecting metal objects in the body, and was about as fine an instrument as could be expected, though it was completely eclipsed by the revolutionary machines brought about by Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery of X-Rays in 1895.  And as it just so happens, the first surgical case in which the x-rays were used was for a case involving a shotgun wound. 

Finally, one of the reasons why Bell's instrument didn't quite work on President Garfield is that Garfield's bed had a metal box spring, which very well might have played havoc with Bell's instrument.  Perhaps if there was no metal in examining area, Bell's device might've worked. 

Notes:

An earlier and more crude device had been invented by Wilhelm Heinrich Dove (1803-1879, a German physicist and early meteorologist) though I am not sure that it comes into play with Bell's apparatus at all.

From Harper's Weekly, 13 August 1881:

"The experiments made by Professor Alexander Graham Bell with the view of determining by the aid of the electric current the location of the bullet in the President's person were of the most interesting nature. The possibility that a time might come when it would be necessary to make incisions at once for the removal of the bullet, without consuming precious time for further consultation, gave to the experiments an importance which added greatly to their interests."

"An apparatus known as the induction balance had been used by Professor Bell in analyzing metals. This instrument, modified so as to impart to it the highest degree of sensitiveness, was used in the search for the leaden ball. Its nature is such that it is not easily understood except by electricians. It consists of a battery, two coils of insulated wire, a circuit-breaker, and a telephone. The ends of the primary coil are connected with a battery, and those of the secondary coil are fastened to the posts of the telephone. This latter connection renders audible any faint sound produced by the circuit-breaker, or any change in the pitch of that sound. The coils may be so placed in their relationship to each other that no sound is made by the circuit-breaker. They are then said to be balanced, and the wires are extremely sensitive to the disturbing presence of any other piece of metal. A bullet like that with which the President was shot, before it was flattened, will, when placed within two and one-half inches of the most sensitive point on the pair of coils, cause a faint protest against the disturbance to arise in the telephone. A flattened bullet of the same bulk, when presented with its flat surface toward the coils, will make its presence felt at a distance of nearly five inches. When its sharp edge is turned toward the plane of the coils, no sound is produced beyond the distance of one inch."

"With these facts in view, the experiments to locate the position of the bullet in the President's body were begun. The patient was bolstered up in bed, and he watched the proceedings with mute interest. His physicians stood around. Professor Bell stood with his back toward the President, holding the telephone to his ear, while Mr. Tainton, Professor Bell's assistant, moved the coils over that portion of the abdomen where the leaden ball was thought to be imbedded. When the sensitive centre of the instrument was immediately over the black and blue spot that appeared shortly after the President was wounded, Professor Bell said, "Stop! there it is."

"The experiment was repeated several times -- once with Mrs. Garfield listening at the telephone; and she told the President when the coils had been brought to the spot where the presence of the bullet had previously caused the delicate instrument to give forth a singing sound. From these tests it was inferred that in any event the bullet was less than five inches from the surface, and that if it was only slightly flattened, or if its edge was turned obliquely toward the surface, it might be much nearer to the skin. The conclusion reached was that if it should become necessary to remove the bullet at any time, this might be speedily accomplished by two quick cuts with the surgeon's lancet."

Searching for Structure: Triangles and Trees

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1494

It was this lovely engraving from Richard Bradley's A General Treatise of  Husbandry and Gardening..., printed in London in 1721/2, that brought up the issue of structure in creation, and how that issue was in one way approached by the new tool in the scientific toolchest, the microscope. 

"...the Contrivances of the Almighty Creator is as visible in the meanest Insect of Plant, as in the greatest Leviathan or the strongest Oak.  To touch upon all the Wonders this Instrument shews us would be infinite"--William Molyneux, on the microscope, in his A Treatise of Dioptricks in Two Parts (1692, quotation fro the second edition of 1709 via Marjorie Nicholson's Science and  Imagination, Cornell, 1956.

The question that the microscope---newly introduced and popularized by Robert Hooke in 1665 and Anton van Leeuwenhoek in 1674--was so able to address at this time was the question of the structure of things, and whether the Almighty Creator allowed for unrestrained creativeness or if the cosmos was subject to patterns and forms.  The microscope was so tremendously nimble that it allowed its observers the luxury of finding "correct" answers on either/both sides of the issue, that arguments could be well made and sustained for variety and regularity. But of course all found the reason for either end of the argument deeply seated in the e hands of god, as seen in the lovely quote below by the great early microscopical popularizer, Henry Baker¹. 

But this is just the tiniest bit of a nod at the question of structure in the history of science, a search for the relationships between, well, things small and large:  atomic, molecular, cellular, organism, population, ecosystem,solar system, universe.  The issue of structure may be the only issue--perhaps if you were made to select one question to have answered, automatically, an answer for everything, it might be this issue of how things stand in relations to one another.

Which gets us to this 1721 engraving of a tree-covered hill, following the designs of a human creator, a re-animator of the natural landscape according to a theory of beauty, part of which hangs in the form of a triangle  in the right-hand upper corner.  A three-sided strategy of the relationships in nature, provided by a human vision. A very small  appreciation of an attempt to recognize the relationships between things, and in this case, the beauty of trees and hills. 

Notes:

1.  "The first Part of this Treatise discovers in the Particles of Matter composing Salts and saline Substances, Properties whose amazing Effects would surpass all human Belief or Conception, were we not convinced of their Truth by the strongest ocular Demonstration. That beautiful Order in which they arrange themselves and come together under the Eye, after being separated and set at Liberty by Dissolution, is here described and composed but one kind of figure, however simple, with Constancy and Regularity, we should declare it wonderful: What must we then fay, when we see every Species working as it were on a different Plan, producing Cubes, Rhombs, Pyramids, Pentagons, Hexagons, Octagons, or some other curious Figures peculiar to itself; or composing a Variety of Ramifications, Lines, and Angles, with a greater Mathematical Exactness than the most skilful Hand could . draw them?"

"Sensible of my own Ignorance, I pretend not to account how this is done: all I know is, that Chance or Accident cannot possibly produce Constancy and Order, nor inert Matter give Activity and Direction to itself. When therefore these Particles of Salts are seen to move in Rank and File, obedient to unalterable Laws, and compose regular and determined Figures, we must recur to that Almighty Wisdom and Power which planned out the System of Nature, directs the Courses of the Heavens and governs the whole Universe."  -- Original, shorter quote of Henry Baker in his Employment of the Microscope (1753) found in Nicholson's book; the above, longer version is from the 1764 (and second) edition, found here.

Questionable Quidity Department: Cigarette-attached Ash Tray

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

In the entire invento-sphere of things crying out for suitable invention, this "innovation" in smoking is surely not one of them.  Perhaps if you needed an additional bit of strangeness in developing the quirkyness of an impossible boss for a character in a movie--someone who needed to be able to be free of the responsibility of flicking the ashes from their ciggie as they screamed at a subordinate, or a cook using the device to free up both hands while preparing a meal, or etc.--then I guess this invention could be part of the genius of a role.   Beyond that, I don't know...particularly if there was a smoke-in-bed version.

Perhaps the downfall of such a device is seen in the eyes of the model, which are transfixed on the ashes in her nose tray.  Maybe the settling of the ashes two inches from your nose would be a hypnotic event, altering the wearer's sense of place and attention, giving you poor vision, and a certain sense of smoky sullenness.

 

Questionable Quidity Department: Cow Pants

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This image comes from a stockpile of loose bits that have fallen out of various magazines--this one from Popular Science for October, 1937.

Fantastic Composition & Design: Frozen Anatomy of a Hanged Man

 JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1494

Source [National Library of Medicine]:  Braune, Wilhelm. Topographisch-anatomischer Atlas : nach Durchschnitten an gefrornen Cadavern. (Leipzig: Verlag von Veit & Comp., 1867-1872).  And Supplement: Braune, Wilhelm. Die Lage des Uterus und Foetus am Ende der Schwangerschaft. (Leipzig: Verlag von Viet & Comp. , 1872).

This extraordinary work is part of an anatomical flap book by Wilhelm Braune (1831-1892), a professor of anatomy at the University of Leipzig.  The image above is a cross-section of the cadaver that was frozen and thinly cut in the similar vein (sorry!) as the more modern Adam & Eve of the Visible Human Project

and which  consists of over 30 color lithographs of frozen cross sections of human anatomy.  The male images from the series are described by Braune:

"[they are] taken from the body of a powerful, well-built, perfectly normal man, aged 21, who had hanged himself. The organs exhibited no pathological abnormalities. The body, which was brought unfrozen, was placed on a horizontal board … In this position, the subject lay untouched in the open air, and at the temperature of about 50 degrees F., for fourteen days. At the end of this time the process of freezing was commenced and completed …"

The National Library of Medicine then continues with the description for preparation of the specimens:

"After sections were cut, thin paper was placed over them and tracings were made of the anatomical features. Similar techniques were used to create the supplement, Die Lage des Uterus und Foetus am Ende der Schwangerschaft, which features large folded plates.  Tables B and C of the Supplement include large flaps showing different views of the lower half of the body, and scans were made of each flap along with the shared upper half (i.e. Table B (view 1), Table B (view 2), etc.)."

Notes:

Thw work was published in English as: Braune, W. An atlas of topographical anatomy after plane sections of frozen bodies. Trans. by Edward Bellamy. (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1877)

 

An Image Addition to a Series of Posts on the Antiquarian Publication of Artwork by Children

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Part of this blog's series on The Antiquarian Publication of Children's Artwork

Continuing an earlier post on the Great Rarity and Sublimity of Antiquarian Artwork by Children

I have found another small bit to add to the few posts I've made on this blog concerning the wide, vacant spaces of antiquarian publications of children's artwork.  Its a small bit, but every bit is very difficult to come by:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think that I can safely say that artwork by children does not make very many appearances in Western art prior to the 20th century--published images just don't appear.  Nor do the originals--considering the ephemeral nature of the effort at art by children, their work just don't seem to survive.  Some of that reason--particularly in America--was the scarcity of materials for kids to produce art with: paper was not inexpensive, and neither brushes and paints.  Crayons, invented for chubby and reachy fingers, were not invented for the mass market until 1903.  (Crayola sold eight crayons in a box for a nickel.  The colors?  Black, brown, blue, red, purple, orange, yellow, and green.)   Then of course the artwork would have to be saved, somehow, for generations.  As much as it would be fascinating to find artwork done at age four by your great-great grandparents, it would have to survive the cleansing tendencies of four generations of clean-up.  End result:  there's just not that much antiquarian chldrens' art floating around...

(Continue reading here.)

The Earliest Art Inspired by the Epochal Discovery of the X-Ray?

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1493  [Thanks to Morbid Anatomy for surfacing this fantastic image!]

Part of this blog's series on  Blank, Empty and Missing Things:  the Skin.

The impact of the sciences in (on?) art has been a frequent visitor to this blog--the photographic work of Etienne Marey and the coming of the futurists, the structuring of the fourth dimension, the discovery of the microscopic world, and so on., are fantastically interesting events which at some time bear some responsibility in the history of art.

The artwork in question appeared in Jugend, Band 1, (February) 1896, and is called "Das Neue Strahlen", calling directly on the announcement just a few months earlier in 1895 of Roentgen's “Ueber eine neue Art von Strahlen". The image depicts a young woman wearing a mask and clearly subjected to x-ray, as we see some parts of her clothing and beneath that the skeleton of her hips and legs, and within her rib cage we see a delicately drawn St. Valentine's Day-like heart. 

It seems to me--and this is just working on long memory--that this is an extremely early application of the X-Ray in the art world.  And while the anatomy is nothing new, the getting-to-the-anatomy is:   for the first time in human history, it was possible to see the structure of a body without performing a dissection, and it is this advance that the artist is exhibiting.  It is difficult to appreciate the impact of this advancement now--perhaps it would seem to people in 1895 something like a sudden announcement today that almost all surgery from this point forward is now accomplished with nanobots or a biological robotic element or whatever and which would eliminate virtually all previous complications of cut-and-stitch operations.  Monumental.  It was something like that for Roentgen's discovery in 1895. 

In 1895 50-year-old Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s ephochal discovery was announced (“Ueber eine neue Art von Strahlen", "On a New Type of Ray"), which built upon the work of J. Plucker (1801-1868), J. W. Hittorf (1824-1914), C. F. Varley (1828-1883), E. Goldstein (1850-1931), Sir William Crookes (1832-1919), H. Hertz (1857-1894) and the horribly odious Phil Lenard (1862-1947 and who didn’t die soon enough). The experiment revealed as much to humans as did the experiments and inventions of Hooke and Leeuwenhoek on the invisible worlds revealed by their microscopes. Bertha, Roentgen’s wife, sat for 15 minutes while her husband passed his rays through her hand; she ran from the room once she saw the results, revealing her very bones and no doubt a strong sense of the fragility of life, and the strong presence of death.  Many had the a similar reaction to the Kandinsky's shapes and Malevich’s white circles and red rectangles and Ibsen’s drama and Einstein’s dancing dust and the rogue syncopation of jazz—these newnesses were threatening to all of the established ways of looking at physics, and art, and theatre, and listening to jazz.  It was a new perspective which challenged the firmly established vision of these things, upsetting the nature of comfort and acceptance.    It is probably a very natural reaction to try and protect established memory—but memory is made all of the time, and so should be relatively flexible…at least it is mechanically healthier to allow a little bending than to be rigid and brittle. 

 Notes

For example, one of Marey's sequenced photographs from the 1870's and which reminds me of  Duchamp's revolutionary Nude Descending:

 

An Uncommon Sentence on Witch Liniment

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

I'm not sure where to go with this post, exactly--I certainly wanted to capture this incredible sentence,  though, which is one of the most bizarre-sounding creatures I've encountered in quite some time.

"The first liniment then is composed of the fat of young children seethed in a brazen vessel until it becomes thick as slab, and then scummed."--Montague Summers, The Werewolf, 1933.

Seethed/slab/scummed. 

All's fair in love and shape-shifting, which is what this is referenced, part of a Witch's salve/potion for werewolf-y preparations.  It came about while looking around for some information on an image here for the plant Solanum Somniferum, a woodcut engraving from Pier Andrea Mattioli's (1500 to 1577) translation of Panadius Dioscorides' (40-90 a.c.e.) De Materia Medica.  This ancient botanical received treatment over the centuries by many writers (including  Fuchs, Anguillara, Mattioli, Maranta, Cesalpino, Dodoens, Fabio Colonna, and the Bauhins), though Mattioli's (ca.) 1560 treatment included more than 150 text illustrations, one of which is this layered and flowing image of Solanum, which I believe is Shakespeare's "insane root", a basis for ointments and ungents of considerable diversity, finding use in undercoating for women's makeup, and as a purgative, and aphrodisiac. And of course as an ingredient for a witch's body lotion when dealing with such things as shape-shifters and werewolves, and also for hallucinogenic experiences, and (if enough is consumed) death.  It seems an all-purpose plant, seemingly not far-removed (to my non-botanical anti-gardening mind, please forgive me) from the equally expansive belladonna, night shade, a wide-ranging plant that even though its name in Italian means something like "beautiful woman" is famous for its lethal qualities.

Perhaps this sort of sentence, the seethed/slab/scummed bit above, is what Hans Baldung had in mind when he depicted his famous witches Sabbath (of 1510):

 

Electro-LUXurious 15: Electroplating the Human Dead, 1891

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

This is the 15th installment of a new series on United States Patent Reports on electrical quackery and unsubstantiated bric--a-brac from the newly-electric world of the period of 1870-1900--the following is a little outside the norm, being French, but I couldn't resist it. 

When a picture just isn't enough...

And while we’re at it, let’s consider the work of Dr. Varlot (of the Paris Hospital) in electrocuting the dead.  Actually, what he proposed was another pretty gruesome use of electricity, though this one didn't make promises of miraculous cures, or execute anyone.  Varlot proposed to “metalize” the dead (as we see in this very unsettling image of a child being electroplated) for, well, some purpose, purpose unknown.  It just seems and seemed like a bad idea, all the way around--a poster child for Bad Ideas everywhere. The medical uses of an electroplated baby seem very limited, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do such a thing to a dead child of their own.  It is wrong on every level.

The engraving comes from Leonard de Vries, Victorian Inventions" (1971), who quotes the original source (the Scientific American for 1891) with this description of the procedure:

"Dr Varlot, a surgeon in a major hospital in Paris, has developed a method of covering the body of a deceased person with a layer of metal in order to preserve it for eternity.  The drawing illustrates how this is done with the cadaver of a child.  The body is first made electrically conductive by atomising nitrate of silver on to it.  To free the silver in this solution, the object is placed under a glass dome from which the air is evacuated and exposed to the vapours of white phosphorous dissolved in carbon disulphide.  Having been made conductive, the body is immersed in a galvanic bath of sulphate of copper, thus causing a 1 millimetre thick layer of metallic copper to be deposited on the skin.  The result is a brilliant red copper finish of exceptional strength and durability."

Another method of electroplating the dead (in 1934) is discussed in the interesting blog, Quigley's Cabinet, here.