The Art of Medicine: Over 2,000 Years of Images and Imagination by Julie Anderson, Emm Barnes, and Emma Shackleton. (University of Chicago Press, 2012.)
Coffee table book alert. Actually I probably wouldn’t put The Art of Medicine on my coffee table, because I don’t think I could stop looking at this book.
The Health Giver (La Messagére de Santé), G. Hazan, c. 1920s; coloured lithograph. Credit: Wellcome Library.
The images, all from the Wellcome Collection, span thousands of years and a variety of media. Hundreds of works chronicle the quest for human health across time and cultures, and highlight the role artists (and sometimes patients) play in communicating just what health care practitioners are up to.
There are botanical prints of medicinal herbs, scanning electron micrographs of disease-causing viruses and ruptured blood vessels, Francis Crick’s first sketches of DNA, public health propaganda posters tackling venereal disease (see below), and sinister paintings of early amputations and blood-letting. (You just know it’s not going to end well for the patients.)
Check out the slideshow below, and give thanks for anesthesia and antibiotics.
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