We ended part I of our horror dental story hinting at the flourishing business of human teeth between centuries XVIII and XIX. As people were growing more and more attentive towards the health and look of their smile, the request of prosthetics that didn’t look like prosthetics at all (and

Besides writing on a couple of underground magazines, I am a high school teacher. More precisely, I teach Philosophy and History. And if making teenagers fall in love with the first is child’s play, the latter is always a really tough pill to sugar. Therefore, I borrowed from my middle

The asylum industry of the 18th through 20th century is a subject I’m fascinated by. It shows the best and worst of humanity, our drive to help one another inextricably intertwined with our disgust with one another. When I came across these photos of asylum equipment from the mid 1800s to the mid

My favorite books as a kid for were always Pop Up Books. So when I saw the 1661 pop-up book of medical illustrations entitled Kleiner welt Spiegel, das ist, Abbildung Göttlicher Schöpffung an dess Menschen Leib: mit beygesetzer Schrifftlicher Erklärung (Ulm, 1661), a German translation of Johann Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum originally published

When I am looking for artistic inspiration, one of the things I turn to frequently is antique medical illustration. While today’s medical aids are stark in their realism, the medical illustration of past centuries – even the photography of the 1800s and early 1900s – had a stylized and artistic

Early photography had little or no bounds as to subject matter. From photos of executions to photos of medical experimentation, people loved taking pictures of anything and everything, including scenes that would not be photographed today. One place that was a popular setting for photographs was the university dissection lab