Category Archives: Anatomy

Home is Where the Heart Is, mixed media, by Ryan Hoge. Love the drips.

This Monday, Morbid Anatomy presents at Observatory "Morbid Magicians, Demented Doctors, and Sinister Swamis: The Golden Age of the American Spook Show," an illustrated lecture by Shane Morton of the Atlanta Silver Scream Spook Show. As an added bonus, DJ Davin Kuntze has promised to play his beloved Victrola until the night ends or until he runs out of needles, whichever comes first. So as you can see, this is a night not-to-be-missed. Full details follow; hope to see you there!

Morbid Magicians, Demented Doctors, and Sinister Swamis: The Golden Age of the American Spook Show
An Illustrated lecture by Shane Morton of Atlanta’s Silver Scream Spook Show
Date: Monday, May 17
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5

There was a time when morbid magicians, demented doctors, and sinister swamis ran wild over this country! Audiences packed in to witness live midnight performances of ghosts being conjured above their heads, raging gorillas grabbing women from their seats, and Frankenstein’s Monster stomping loose through darkened movie palaces! The 1930’s-50’s was the golden era of a now virtually lost performance art form. But what resonated with people then, remains powerful to us today. Find out all about the fascinating world of the great American spook show at tonight’s lecture, which will give your goose pimples goose pimples, and scare the yell out of you!

Shane Morton is an artist, performer and musician from Atlanta, Georgia. He runs the Silver Scream Spook Show, the only spook show to exist in over a generation. You can find out more about Morton and his work at http://wwww.silverscreamspookshow.com and http://www.myspace.com/silverscreamspookshow.

You can find out more about this presentation 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. Click on image to see larger version.

Friend of Morbid Anatomy Todd Vladyka has just let me know about a rather exciting looking consortium taking place next week at the College of Surgeons (home of the Mütter Museum); highlights include an entire panel devoted to "The 'Art' of Anatomy and Other Collections," which will consist of a presentation devoted to the art of Joseph Maclise (as seen above), and two other presentations entitled "The Exquisite Cadaver and the Evolution of the Anatomic Theater"and "Constituting the Syphilitic Collector."

The opening lecture--"What Mark Twain Might Tell Us (And Ask Us) If He Could Join Us Tonight"--is free and open to the public; $25 for students or $50 for non-students will gain you admission to all the other events.

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

The Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium
Through the Lens of Time: Perspectives on Medicine and Health Care
May 19 – 20, 2010

Events on Wednesday, May 19, 2010

2 – 4 p.m. Visit the Ars Medica Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new Perelman Building (across from the Museum’s main building, corner of Pennsylvania and Fairmount Avenues); Hosted by Peter Barberie, PhD, The Brodsky Curator of Photographs

6:30 – 8:30 p.m. What Mark Twain Might Tell Us (And Ask Us) If He Could Join Us Tonight, K. Patrick Ober, MD, Professor of Internal Medicine and Associate Dean for Education, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC; author of Mark Twain and Medicine: Any Mummery Will Cure.

At the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 South Twenty-Second Street (between Chestnut and Market Streets).

Wine-and-cheese reception to follow. This program is open to the public.

Events on Thursday, May 20, 2010

At The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 19 South Twenty-Second Street

8 a.m. Breakfast – Mitchell Hall

8:30 a.m. Welcome
Rhonda L. Soricelli, MD – Chair, Program Committee
Paul C. Brucker, MD – President, College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Mary Ellen Glasgow, PhD, RN – Associate Dean, Drexel University College of Nursing & Health Professions

8:45–9:45 a.m. Opening Session – Mitchell Hall
The Medical/Healthcare Humanities: Where We Are; Where We’ve Been; Where We’re Going
Moderator: David H. Flood, PhD

• Humanism Versus Humanities in Medicine: An Historical Perspective, Jack Coulehan, MD, MPH
• Medical Humanism/Professionalism Teaching in a Community Hospital Since WWII, Victor Bressler, MD
• Disability, Medicine, and Representation: Integrating Disability Studies into Medical, Education and Practice, Rebecca Garden, PhD
• American Missionary Health Care Projects in the late Ottoman Empire: Civilization, Hygiene, and Salvation, Sylvia Önder, PhD

9:45–10:15 a.m. Discussion: Flood, Coulehan, Bressler, Garden and Önder

10:15 – 10:30 a.m. Morning break – Mitchell Hall

10:30 – 11:30 a.m. Concurrent sessions

1. Cholera and Its Representations – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Steven J. Peitzman, MD

• Cholera, Commerce, and Contagion: Rediscovering Dr. Beck’s Report, Ashleigh R.Tuite, MHSc(c) and David N. Fisman, MD
• The Epidemic Behind the Veil: Cholera in Fiction, Film and History, Agnes A. Cardoni, PhD; Molly Bridger; Angel Fuller; and Casey Kelly

2. Impact of Illness and Disabilty – Gross Library
Moderator: Jennifer Patterson, DO(c)

• Home Sweet Home: The Impact of Poliomyelitis on the American Family, Richard J. Altenbaugh, PhD
• Casualties of the Spirit: The Transatlantic Origins of Post Traumatic Neuroses, Susan Epting, PhD(c)
• Turning a Blind Eye to the Rehabilitation Act: Meaningful Access and the Dollar Bill, Kenji Saito, MD/JD 2010(c)

3. The Medical Environment – Koop Room
Moderator: Todd Vladyka, DO

• The Anemic Narrative: Will the electronic health record reduce the patient narrative to a footnote?, Valerie Satkoske, MSW, PhD
• Gender Roles and the Changing Face of Medicine, Nina Singh, MD and Gabrielle Jones, PhD
• The Changing Public Image of the American Catholic Hospital, 1925 – Present, Barbra Mann Wall, PhD

11:45 a.m. – Concurrent sessions

12:45 p.m.

4. Exploring the Text – Koop Room
Moderator: Jack Truten, PhD

• Was Sherlock Holmes a Quack? Or, Why Arthur Conan Doyle’s Medical Stories Matter, Sylvia A. Pamboukian, PhD
• Reaching Back Through Time: Constructing Genealogies of the Not-Neurotypical in Illness, Narratives, Elizabeth A. Dolan, PhD
• Pathographies: Teaching Illness, Creating Theory, Karol Weaver, PhD and
• A Recovery Narrative, Jenny Traig’s Devils in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood, Sara Kern

5. Alternative Dimensions in Health Care – Gross Library
Moderator: Steven Rosenzweig, MD

• Cacao: From Ethnobotany to Translational Medicine, William J. Hurst, PhD
• Just Language: The Key to Bridging the Gap Between Physicians and Patients, Kathryn M. Ross, MBE, DMH(c)
• Historical Perspectives on Compensation in Human Subjects Research, Ilene Albala, JD/MBE(c)

6. On Stage and Screen – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Joe Vander Veer, Jr., MD

• Dramatizing the Local History of Medicine: An Early 21st Century Perspective on the Yellow Fever Epidemic of the Late 19th Century, Robert J. Bonk, PhD
• Television’s Images of Health Practitioners and/or Health Care Institutions Through the Ages, Rosemary Mazanet, MD, PhD and Joseph Turow, PhD

12:45 – 1:45 p.m. Lunch with Performance – Mitchell Hall
My doc’s better than your doc: Medical advertising’s rinse and spin and the lost voice of Arthur Godfrey, Richard Donze, DO, MPH

2:00 - 3:00 p.m. Concurrent sessions

7. Narratives of Illness, Aging and Grief – Koop Room
Moderator: Kimberly Myers, PhD

• Listening to the Stories of Patients, David Biro, MD, PhD
• MY FATHER’S HEART: A Son’s Reckoning With the Legacy of Heart Disease, Steve McKee
• Imagining Death: Contemporary Grief Narratives, Kate Dean-Haidet, RN, MSN, MA, PhD(c)

8. The “Art” of Anatomy and Other Collections – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Jan Goplerud, MD

• Joseph Maclise and the Anatomical Arts Tradition, Rebecca E. May, PhD
• The Exquisite Cadaver and the Evolution of the Anatomic Theater, Sherrilyn M. Sethi, MMH(c), DMH(c)
• Constituting the Syphilitic Collector, Elizabeth Lee, PhD

3:15 – 4:15 p.m. Closing Panel – Mitchell Hall
Moderator: Rhonda L. Soricelli, MD
The Virtual and the Real: Medical History at the 21st Century Mutter Museum, Robert Hicks, PhD; Anna Dhody, MA and Karie Youngdahl, BA

4:20 – 5:00 p.m. Wrap-up; future plans for consortium

Program Committee: Andrew Berns, PhD(c), David H. Flood, PhD, Jan Goplerud, MD, Steven J. Peitzman, MD, Rhonda L. Soricelli, MD (Chair), Joseph Vander Veer, Jr., MD and Todd Vladyka, DO.

This meeting is made possible through the generous support of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia’s Francis C. Wood Institute for the History of Medicine and Sections on Medicine and the Arts and Medical History and Drexel University’s College of Nursing & Health Professions and College of Medicine with additional support from the Department of History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania

Click here to find out more about this event; To register, please send an email to RLSoricelli@comcast.net no later than MAY14th midnight. Registration is mandatory for the symposium.

Image above, "Head and skull of malformed infants; conjoined twins, bilateral cleft lip and holoprosencephaly" from Joseph Maclise's book Surgical Anatomy, published in London in 1856. Click on image to see much larger version; Found on the N-66 Blog.

These body and product sculptures come from the unique mind of Joseph Barbaccia.  The cheese grater sort of made me vomit, but it’s still pretty striking to look at.  But you havvvve to check out some of the others which weren’t posted here…

There’s something so beautiful and intriguing about these paintings by Ivan Ebel.  They remind me of those clinical anatomy textbook diagrams, but so much more warm and human.  I can just envision the middle painting above covering a giant empty wall in the foyer of a hospital or modern doctor’s office.  Love it.

[via Sang Bleu]