Anatomy as Art

This is pretty damn cool:
http://link.library.utoronto.ca/anatomia/application/index.cfm

If you liked the Body Worlds exhibit at the Science Centre, you'll appreciate this. Anatomia -- a collection of 4500 full page plates featuring historical renderings of the human anatomy, which are housed in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. They range in age from 140 to almost 500 years old! I love history, and I love old books. It'd be so cool to go and see these in person, but this interactive website is pretty good.

It reminds me of this old book I used to have. It was all about human anatomy, and although it was in my collection of Golden Books and Disney stories, I have a feeling it wasn't intended for someone as young as I was when I first looked at it. What I never figured out- why there was a hole drilled right through the middle of the book. Perhaps it was my brothers old text book, and he was feeling a little destructive one day? Perhaps, like a deck of cards at the casino, it could only be read once and then had to be marked as "invalid"? Who knows.

posted by Unknown @ 3:23 p.m.