Category Archives: Anatomy

This Thursday at 8:00 PM at Observatory, please join Morbid Anatomy and curator Dr. Laurens de Rooy for a highly-illustrated ‘dissection’ of the spectacular and fascinating Amsterdam-based Vrolik Anatomical Museum, a specimen of which is pictured above. Copies of the beautiful and lavishly illustrated new book about the collection--entitled Forces of Form-- will also be available for sale and signing.

Full details below; very much hope to see you there!

Come and See: The Amsterdam Anatomical Collection Dissected
An illustrated lecture and book signing with Dr. Laurens de Rooy, Curator of the Museum Vrolik in Amsterdam
Date: Thursday, November 11
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5

Books will be available for sale and signing.

Two skeletons of dwarfs, rare Siamese twins, cyclops and sirens, dozens of pathologically deformed bones, the giant skull of a grown man with hydrocephalus, the skeleton of the lion once owned by king Louis Napoleon, as well as the organs of a babirusa, Tasmanian devil and tree kangaroo – rare animals that died in the Amsterdam zoo ‘Artis’ shortly before their dissection.

Counting more than five thousand preparations and specimens, the Museum Vrolikianum, the private collection of father Gerard (1775-1859) and his son Willem Vrolik (1801-1863), was an amazing object of interest one hundred and fifty years ago. In the 1840s and 50s this museum, established in Gerard’s stately mansion on the river Amstel, grew into a famous collection that attracted admiring scientists from both the Netherlands and abroad.

After the Vrolik era, the museum was expanded with new collections by succeeding anatomists. What motivated the Vroliks and their successors to collect all these anatomical specimens, skulls, skeletons, and monstrosities? were did their material come from? How did these collections help to built up their views on the origins of life forms?

Since 1984 the museum is located in the academic Hospital of the University of Amsterdam. Recently the museum collections were portrayed by the photographer Hans van den Bogaard for the book Forces of Form. These images will form an essential part in this talk, a ‘dissection’ of the Amsterdam anatomical collection.

Dr. Laurens de Rooy (b. 1974) works as a curator of the Museum Vrolik in the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam. He studie Medical Biology, specializing in the history of science and museology. during his internship he researched the collection of father and son Vrolik. In 2009 he obtained his PhD in medical history.

You can find out more about theis event on the Observatory website by clicking here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

33 Plates of Morbid anatomy Ellucidating Dr. Bright's Works
Published in London, 1829
British XVIIIc Mounted Atlas
Paper; stipple ; mezzotint; hand-coloured
Published by Longman; Prints made by William Say

Inscriptions: Lettered within image with letters for identification, and: "Plate/ Drawn by F.R.Say/ Engraved by W.Say/ London Published July 1. 1829, by Longman, Rees, Orme & Brown." Stamped with Say's blind stamp.

Found on the British Museum website; to find out more--and see more images!--click here.

Tattoos on your teeth! This detailed artwork is done in Utah by ToothArtist. There are many more examples on their site and details on how you can get your own tooth tattoos!

It can be a little pricey, but tattoos are permanent and a good tattoo is worth the price.

This is so fascinating and bizarre to me. I wish I still had my teeth from when I was younger. I would so get Chairy from Pee-wee’s Playhouse tattooed on a molar.

[myloveforyou]

Steve Nyberg’s current Threadless submission, “The Donor”. You can vote for it on their site.  Also, check out his other work on his blog.

[via tdw]

Weapons of Mass Design design some pretty nice silk screens, like this one above for the Vera Project.  Check them out right here!

Darkstar: Gold from Evan Boehm on Vimeo.

Sembler, a design group “focused on sound and vision in a spatial context,” created this music video for Darkstar’s “Gold” off their new album, North.  They used a combination of specialized 3D lighting, “Gold” code, and data from the Visible Human Project to represent the concept of an idea infecting multiple hosts.  The “idea” is represented by gold particles in the music video.

The cool thing is that all of the code used to make this video is available to the public.  So you can go ahead and make a video just like this.  Good luck!