Medical illustration and history of medicine at Belskie Museum

The Belskie Museum of Art & Science in northern New Jersey has medical illustration and history of medicine sculptures done by Abram Belskie. I recently visited it and took some photos of his works.

It appears as though they may hold his papers which might make an interesting research project. Belskie worked on a Birth Atlas in 1940. The museum publishes a small booklet about him that's available at the information desk.

Letter of the Day: October 5

Appleton Station Va Oct 5^th 1864

 

To Surgeon J. H. Brinton A. Medical Depot, Washington

 

Sir:

 

Mr. E. Leitz, artist Gallery Broadway New York wrote to me that the Med. Department was in want for an artists in water-colors and that he had recommended me as such.

 

Therefore I beg leave to give you my directions with the remark that I am unfit for field duty and employed as clerk  in the Adjutant’s Office.

 

I am, Sir,

Very Respectfully

Your obedient Servant

Herman Strider

Comp D, 46^th Reg. N.Y. Vet. Vols

1 Division, 2 Brigade 9 Army Corps

The beauty of medical illustration

We have a respectable amount of medical illustrations in various collections and when you see a good one, not only are you given a special behind-the-scenes tour of anatomy, you're witnessing fine art.

One of our posts on Civil War photography was recently featured on the blog The Sterile Eye, and I came across this post that features the incredible work of Jan van Rymsdyk, an 18th century illustrator. Take a look. They're breathtakingly beautiful.

Letter of the day, March 9

Arthur Hill Hassall's work in public health led to reforms in water purity and to the Food Adulteration Act of 1860 in the UK and subsequent laws against the practice. Woodward may have gotten the title of his book wrong. It might be Food and Its Adulterations. Woodward, this letter's author, was a pioneer in photomicroscopy. Henry, its recipient, was head of the Smithsonian. The history of federal American food quality control begins a decade after this letter was written.


March 9, 1875

Professor J. Henry.

Respectfully returned. Beautiful plates of the microscopical appearances of various kinds of milk can be found in the Atlas of the "Cours de Microscop[i]e," of A. Donné, Paris, 1845, Plates XVII, XVIII, and XIX, and very good woodcuts, with an excellent account of the subject, in the article on "Milk and its adulterations," in Arthur Hill, Hasslin [Hassall] "Adulterations Detected," 2nd Edit, London, 1811, p. 205.

Very respectfully,
J.J. Woodward

Letter of the day, March 6 (1 of 2)

You can see some examples of these medical illustrations on our Flickr site, as well as the Lyster bag, developed by the Colonel Lyster mentioned in the letter, in 1915. The Lyster bag was a means of purifying water with the treatment of calcium hypochlorite and was used for decades for field and camp water treatment.

Yale University
The School of Medicine
Affiliated with the New Haven Hospital
on the
Anthony N. Brady Memorial Foundation

Laboratory of
Pathology and Bacteriology

New Haven, Connecticut
March 6, 1919

Colonel Charles F. Craig,
Army Medical Museum
Washington, D.C.

My Dear Colonel Craig:

I am sending you, under separate cover, four illustrations of the lung in influenza, which were done by artists from the Army Medical Museum. The autopsy numbers of these cases is on the illustration, and there is attached an anatomical diagnosis of the case. I have, besides these four illustrations, eight colored drawings of more or less similar lesions of the respiratory tract in influenza. They are as follows:

Aut. No. 1. Trachea showing an accute hemorrhagic inflammation.
" " 2 &3. Pleural surface and cross section of lobular pneumonia in influenza.
" " 4 &5. Pleural surface and cross section of the lobar type of inflammation.
" " 6. Fibrinopurulent pleurisy
" " 7 &8. Cross sections of subacute and chronic necrotizing and organizing pneumonia.

There are besides these illustrations of influenzal pneumonia, one hundred and thirty-eight gross and microscopic drawings and photo micrographs of the lungs of animals that have died or were killed after exposure to one of the following poisonous gases; chlorine, phosgene, chloropicrin, mustard, cyanogen, chloride, bromide, arsene, organic arsenic compounds, and superpalite.

The monograph which includes these illustrations is in the hands of the Yale Press. A complete list of the illustrations has been furnished to Colonel Lyster of the Chemical Warfare Service, and I have no other list of them to submit at the present time. Of course, it can be made if you feel that is is absolutely necessary.

Very truly yours,
[Major M. Winternitz]

This is what the Creative Commons is all about

Originally uploaded by jrmyst

I just found this on Flickr, an original and creative use of one of our images, a medical illustration by DK Winter. Far out.

Steampunk Anatomy

From the blog e-l-i-s-e, a different take on anatomical illustration. Make sure you click through to the original blog for more.

Duncan Winter artwork

Those wild young men in Anatomical Collections were looking for illustrations for their annual course, and I recalled that AFIP artist Duncan Winter had done some nice illustrations of bones that we had. Kathleen scanned and mounted some on Flickr.

Non-ophthalmic images from the Ball Collection

After a couple of weeks of insanely fast-paced chaos in the archives, I was able to get back to the Ball Collection today for a short time. Here are two scans I made that don't begin to do the original images justice. I wish I could show just how gorgeous the originals are. They are both from Accession 18846: Book: “A Series of Engravings Explaining the Course of the Nerves with an Address to Young Physicians on the Study of the Nerves,” by Charles Bell, First American edition, 1818.



















The ghost image of the lower leg and foot you see here has been transferred from the page, where it was folded up on itself.

Anatomy of the Orbit

Two more illustrations from the Ball Collection, from Agatz's "Atlas zur chirurgischen Anatomie und Operationslehre," 1860. These are real beauties when viewed in a larger size.

Acc. 18938
















And Acc. 18938-2

A few more from Ball

I didn't have time to even open a box from the Ball Collection today, so these are left over from yesterday. They're all from “Miniatur-Abbildungen der wichtigsten Akiurgischen Operationen,” a book illustrating Dieffenbach's operations, by Dr. H. E. Fritze. (1838) The descriptions are transcribed and I don't have a translation. It's a fairly delicate book, which is why you can see shadows at the gutter.

Table 1: venaescetio (obviously not ophthalmic, but I liked it anyway)




















Table 5: Suturae cruentae; Staphyloraphe; Operatio labii leporini























Table 10: Paracentesis sacci lacrymalis oper. Catar. Et trichiasis; Operatio blepharoptosis et pterygii

More discoveries

I found this series when doing research for someone the other day.

The initial photo of Albert Bauer, a soldier wounded in World War 1:



















The first medical illustration demonstrating the surgical procedure used to correct it:




















And the continuation of the procedure:







I haven't come across the final picture but hope I do. I'd really like to see the finished reconstruction.