Dissection, media portrayals, and reaction: Black bodies and medical education in nineteenth-century newspapers.

Throughout the nineteenth century, medical schools in both the Northern and Southern regions of the United States required a regular supply of bodies for medical study and experimentation. Physicians and medical students targeted the bodies of African Americans, both freedmen and the enslaved, to meet this demand. Simultaneously, the nation's booming newspaper market became a stage on which debates about the cruelty of slavery and the social consequences of pursuing medical knowledge played out in articles about the dissection of Black bodies. Such stories increased fears about dissection and mistrust towards the medical profession among African American communities, which manifested in riots against physicians, vandalism against medical schools, and corrective responses from African American newspaper editors and journalists. Through an extensive examination of nineteenth-century U.S. newspapers, this article identifies themes evident in the coverage of dissection during this period. Southern newspapers crafted stories of dissection that served the dual purpose of entertaining White readers and humiliating African Americans. This public humiliation fostered what became a popular genre of derogatory and vile humor that reinforced negative and inaccurate racialized stereotypes as well as racist science. Ultimately, such newspaper coverage provoked reactions within Black communities and among antislavery advocates that showcase how people often excluded from practicing medicine themselves viewed issues like medical education. Newspaper rhetoric around these themes amplified tensions between religious and scientific perspectives, reflected differences and similarities between the northern and southern areas of the United States, and fortified racist views in both cultural and scientific contexts.

3D facial approximation and endocast analysis of the Mummy of Minirdis (Ancient Egypt, ca. 2,300 Before Present).

The present article offers the facial approximation of the mummy of the ancient Egyptian adolescent named Minirdis (ca. 2300 years BP) by means of anatomical analysis of video-images and through a facial approximation protocol implemented on more historical personages. An evaluation of the mummy's endocast is also offered. A potential diagnosis of Sotos syndrome is cautiously considered but its inherent limitations are detailed. Finally, the methodology is presented as a valuable tool both for bio-historical research and for further studies on normal and pathologic morphologies of the cranio-facial district.

Substantive changes in the Latin anatomical nomenclature: Sometimes less is more.

Substantivation, the use of an adjective or participle as a noun, is commonly used informally to shorten Latin anatomical terms. Dozens of substantives also appear in the international standard anatomical terminology. Most of these are venerable and familiar as nouns in Latin anatomical terms. Examples of Latin nouns derived directly or indirectly from Greek and Latin adjectives and participles are presented here. Although neologisms are said to enrich languages, careful consideration is required before adding to a technical vocabulary. Terms consisting of a substantive or displaying a substantive as the head noun may be vague to learners and nonspecialists.

Anatole-Felix Le Double (1848-1913): 110 years of his death.

Anatole-Félix Le Double was a prominent figure associated with the concept of anatomical variations also including the comprehension of their anthropological and zoological aspects. As an anatomist, Le Double contributed significantly with his major treatise regarding muscles and bony variants. Furthermore, Le Double influenced and popularized paleoanthropology and its relation to anatomy not only in France but in several parts of the world - promoting the idea that anatomical variations are not only surgically and clinically relevant but also have an evolutionary significance. To celebrate 110 years of his passing, this paper aims to explain his trajectory as a young physician to one of the most important figures in how anatomical variants are perceived today.

Beasts and Gods: Hippocampal quarrels before memory.

The first description and naming of the hippocampus is usually credited to Arantius (c. 1530 - 1589), whose comparison of the swelling inside the temporal horn of the lateral ventricle to a seahorse (hippocampus) or silkworm (bombyx) was published in the 1587 edition of the Anatomicarum Observationum Liber. However, in the 17th century, the term hippocampus was rarely used and its precise anatomy remained a mystery. The 18th century saw the hippocampus referred to as a wide range of animals and divinities. These terminological issues provoked heated discussions in the French Académie Royale des Sciences, culminating in the seminal description of the hippocampus in the 1780s by Félix Vicq d'Azyr (1748-1794). However, it is striking that no hypothesis concerning the function of the hippocampus was proposed, and its link with memory was not established until the mid-20th century.

"Inform the Head, Give Dexterity to the Hand, Familiarise the Heart": Seeing and Using Digitised Eighteenth-Century Specimens in a Modern Medical Curriculum.

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in digitising museum collections. Among the objects of interest are anatomical and pathological specimens found in medical museums. As researchers increasingly produce digital replicas of these preparations, ways of integrating these resources into the medical curriculum must be explored. This article takes a medical humanities approach to this topical question, comparing the historic use of anatomical specimens to modern intentions, and exploring the potential for using digital anatomy to help integrate humanities into the curriculum. The use of anatomical specimens by William Hunter (1718-1783), whose collection is now kept at the Hunterian in the University of Glasgow, provides a key historic focus. The teaching intentions for his private courses of anatomy are examined, to investigate how specimens were used in an eighteenth-century "curriculum". The motivations behind digitisation and the use of digital anatomy in modern curriculums are then examined and compared. Many of these motivations are shared with Hunter's: the desire to maintain a unique anatomical resource, the need to provide multisensory engagement in learning, and a desire to attempt to show "natural" anatomy without the interference of human processes. The balance between fostering empathy and maintaining detachment is also key for both. Using digital replicas of historic specimens to teach anatomy also opens up a unique opportunity to educate students in the medical humanities in a fully integrated way. Understanding the full story of the specimens they use, as explored in the first half of the article, allows students to place themselves, their dissection subjects, and healthcare as a whole in a historical context. As well as fostering empathy in the dissection lab, the stories behind the specimens can be used to introduce key humanities topics, including ethics, institutional bias, and social aspects of health and disease. It is essential that this potential is explored now while digital anatomy is still a relatively young field, and therefore collaborations between anatomists and medical humanities practitioners can be built and included from the ground up.

Regular anatomical terms revisited: The simplest is often the right one.

Regular anatomical (RA) terminology rules were developed to simplify and clarify Latin anatomical terms in a systematic manner. These rules, which prohibit conjunctions, prepositions, and appositions, and define a consistent word order pattern, are extensions of the original 1895 rule of anatomical nomenclature that anatomical terms should be as short and simple as possible. It is not coincidental that most terms in Terminologia Anatomica (TA), and many traditional terms that were not used in TA, are consistent with RA term rules, and that the RA term rules are also consistent with the guidelines for expanding short form terms to full, unique terms. The consistent form of RA terms facilitates learning and translation, and is easier for humans and machines to manipulate than terms that are not compliant with RA term rules. Despite assertions to the contrary, RA terms are proper Latin terms that simplify the anatomical terminology and, in many cases, restore traditional terms.

What's in a synonym? A nose by any other name would smell.

INTRODUCTION: Communication in the biomedical sciences and clinical practice would be clearer if everyone used the same set of technical terms. Technical vocabularies, such as international standard terminologies, are attempts to avoid common linguistic problems, such as synonymy (many names for a single entity) and polysemy (many meanings for a single term). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Efforts made in human anatomical nomenclature since the late 19th century to deal with these issues were reviewed. RESULTS: The new designations official term, equivalent term, synonym and related term are defined, and current challenges (e.g., eponyms) are identified. DISCUSSION: The addition of synonyms and related terms to the international standard anatomical terminology allows indexing of these terms to the official terms and evaluation of the relationships between terms.

For the Benefit of Students: Memory and Anatomical Learning at Bologna in the Fourteenth to Early Sixteenth Centuries.

The anatomical textbook in the late Middle Ages was one part of a greater pedagogical process that involved students' seeing, hearing, reading, and eventually knowing information about the human body. By examining the role of the anatomical textbook and accompanying bodily images in anatomical learning, this article illuminates the complexity and self-consciousness of anatomical education in the medieval university, as professors focused on ways to enhance student memory of the material. Traditionally, the history of anatomy has been heavily influenced by the anatomical Renaissance of the late-sixteenth century, highlighting a focus on innovative medical knowledge and the scientific method. However, if we engage a pedagogical lens when looking at these medieval authors, it becomes quickly obvious that the whole point of university medicine was not to explore unknown boundaries and discover new ideas of medicine, but rather to communicate the current and established body of knowledge to those not familiar with it.

Antoine Ferrein (1693-1769)-His Life and Contribution to Anatomy and Physiology: The Description of the Vocal Chords and Their Function.

The purpose of this study is to summarize the life and work of the French anatomist and surgeon Antoine Ferrein (1693-1769). Ferrein made an impact in the history of anatomy and physiology through his work and especially with the description of phonation, renal anatomy, and liver and biliary structure. He also made an impact on ophthalmology with the description of the eyelid and its diseases. After a thorough review of the literature, we present in this review his life and his main discoveries with special emphasis on the anatomic description of the vocal chords resembling the chords of a violin tempered by the air exhaled from the lungs and how the physiology of phonation and the surgery of the larynx were revolutionized after that.

"Tesrih-ül Ebdan ve Tercümâni Kibale-i Feylesûfan": the first illustrated anatomy handwritten textbook in Ottoman-Turkish medicine.

INTRODUCTION: Semseddîn-i Itâkî is a key Turkish scientist in the field of anatomy. His book entitled Tesrih-ül Ebdan ve Tercümâni Kibale-i Feylesûfan which was written in the seventeenth century is accepted as the first illustrated anatomy handwritten textbook in Turkish language. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this article, it was examined an original copy of Tesrih-ül Ebdan ve Tercümâni Kibale-i Feylesûfan, which is available at the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul, Turkey, as well as the transliteration of this book from old Turkish (Ottoman-Turkish) alphabet to contemporary Turkish alphabet by Esin Kâhya. In this book, the anatomical drawings and their descriptions were evaluated. RESULTS: In this ancient handwriting, Itâkî begins with thanking God and then describes the general structure of the organs, bones, nerves, muscles and vessels, supporting with various illustrations. These illustrations are mainly focused on cranial bones, muscles, cranial nerves, spinal nerves, stomach, intestines, urogenital system, bladder, trachea, larynx and bronchi. CONCLUSION: While some of these illustrations are similar to the illustrations of the earlier authors such as Ahmed Ibn Mansur, Andreas Vesalius and Juan Valverde de Amusco, others are peculiar to this book. This book is highly significant for it's being the first Turkish book in the field of anatomy in Ottoman-Turkish medicine and the text's being supplemented by illustrations. This book is also a fundamental source for translation of anatomical terms into Turkish. Our knowledge of anatomy continues to improve thanks to the contributions of leading scientists such as Itâkî and, therefore, he deserves praise.

The legacy of Václav Trnka: modern medical education in Slovakia and Hungary in the eighteenth century.

A fresh start of higher medical education in Slovakia and Hungary is closely related to Trnava (Nagyszombat). The University of Trnava had originally been established in 1635 but the Faculty of Medicine was added only later, in 1769, when the name of the university was also changed to Royal Hungarian University of Sciences. A fresh graduate, Václav Trnka from Krovice (1739-1791), was appointed as head of the Department of Anatomy. He was not only an anatomist, but a real polymath of the second half of the eighteenth century practicing medicine as well as becoming the Dean, then the Rector of the University. He has lived and acted within several countries of Central Europe, or rather, the Austrio-Hungarian monarchy during the reign of Empress Maria Theresia, then her son Joseph II. Born in Bohemia (now Czech Republic), studied and graduated in Austria, then finally was appointed as the first Professor of Anatomy of a newly established medical faculty in Upper Hungary (now Slovakia). In 1777, the university was moved first to Buda, then to Pest (now parts of the capital of Hungary), and the Faculty of Medicine was not separated from the rest of the faculties before the end of the Second World War. Following several institutional and name changes, this Medical Faculty is considered as the foundation of the present Semmelweis University. Trnka was a proliferous author, publishing more than 20 monographs covering various branches of clinical medicine, however, no anatomical work may be connected to his activity. And as a typical intellectual of the era, he was a keen and talented musician composing several canons.

Vesalius criticism on Galen's musculoskeletal anatomy.

Galen of Pergamum (129-216/217 AD), an important Greek physician, influenced the history of medicine for more than 1400 years. However, Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), after performing dissections of human cadavers, remarked that Galen made several mistakes due to the fact that his dissections were on animals, particularly on apes. The current study summarizes the main points in which Vesalius criticized Galen in terms of the musculoskeletal anatomy.

The Anatomy of Papal Tiara: A Story About Popes' Contribution and Protection of Anatomists.

Beginning with the thirteenth century, the papacy has exerted an important role in the development of anatomy and medical sciences through the protection and support provided to anatomists, who were in most cases the personal physicians of the popes as well. The work is intended to be a lesson of anatomy of Papal tiara, presenting the most important contributing popes, the anatomists-physicians whom they supported and protected and the relations between papacy and medical sciences.

[Discoveries of Giulio Cesare Aranzi]. / Otkrytiia Dzhulio Chezare Arantsi.

The article provides a Russian translation of the 19th chapter of the work of Italian anatomist and surgeon Giulio Cesare Aranzi (Julius Caesar Arantius, 1530-1589) 'Observationes anatomicae', which describes his discoveries in the anatomy of the organ of vision: detection of m. levator palpebrae superioris and disproving of the then prevailing statement concerning the origin of external muscles of the eye from the dura mater. The article also gives a brief biography.

Casting life, casting death: connections between early modern anatomical corrosive preparations and artistic materials and techniques.

Although the historical connections between anatomy and the visual arts have been explored in quite some depth, especially in the cases of early modern anatomical drawing, sculpting, the making of wet preparations and wax modelling, the role of artistic techniques in the creation of corrosive preparations has received little attention thus far. This is remarkable, as there appear to be significant similarities between casting techniques like those employed by the influential artist Wenzel Jamnitzer (1508-85) and anatomical corrosive techniques. This paper explores the connections between the two domains and argues that, although artistic and anatomical techniques were often very similar in terms of the materials used, the skills that had to be developed to apply them successfully, and the visual results, there were distinct materialities and techniques in each realm. It is demonstrated that the creation of corrosion casts, particularly wax-based casts, required particular skills that were unlike others in the period. The paper does so by analysing the material and technical qualities of corrosive preparations from the period 1700-1900, and by comparing the results of this analysis with written instructions for making corrosive preparations and making casts from the same period in both anatomical and artist handbooks.

Miratü'lEbdan Fi Tesrih-i Azaül-Insan: first printed illustrated anatomy book in Ottoman-Turkish medicine.

BACKGROUND: Medical education in Ottoman-Turkish medicine was shaped by the influence of Claudius Galenus (c.130-c.210) and Ibn-i Sina (c.980-c.1037). These teachings were performed in madrasahs until the beginning of the 19th century. Within the scope of master-apprentice relationship, medical training was also given in private clinics. As a result of religious and social pressures on scientific studies, human cadavers were never used because they were considered sacred. For centuries, all books were handwritten in the Ottoman Empire until the first printing press was established in Istanbul during 1726. However, the first illustrated book on anatomy was not printed until another 100 years later. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A comparative study was conducted on the anatomical drawings in "Miratü'l Ebdan Fi Tesrih-i Azau'l Insan" (Ataullah SM, 17th), and significance of this book. RESULTS: Forty-six out of 56 figures were received from the book of physician and anatomist Jean Palfin (1650-1730). Remaining 9 figures were cited from author himself as collected from Bernard Siegfried Albinus (1697-1170), Raymond Vieussens (1614-1715), R. Drake (1667-1707), Clopton Havers (1657-1702), Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777), Joseph Guichard Duverney (1648-1730). The figures were drawn exactly the same way with minimal changes. Main text of the book is mostly translation from Italian edition of Bertin and Palfin's Works. The book is not only the first printed anatomical book but also the first printed work in Ottoman-Turkish medicine. Another very significant aspect of the illustrations are perspective drawing figures which differ from miniature style drawings of the past. CONCLUSIONS: Sânîzade Ataullah's work has a significant value not only for being the first printed illustrated anatomy book which makes it more approachable but also for providing anatomical drawings as illustrations not as miniature style painting.

The history of optic chiasm from antiquity to the twentieth century.

PURPOSE: The optic chiasm is an essential structure located at the skull base that stirred over time the curiosity of anatomists, who became more and more interested in its structure and function. Through centuries, the optic chiasm was viewed as a vessel crossing, a way of transporting tears secreted by the brain to the eye, integrating images, or responsible for coordinated eye movements. The paper aims to overview the history of understanding the optic chiasm from the beginnings of antiquity to the twentieth century. METHODS: We reviewed the literature and studied all the historical sources on optic chiasm and eyes in the works of ancient, medieval, Renaissance authors, and the seventeenth to nineteenth century works. RESULTS: The optic chiasm is a structure that fascinated ancient anatomists and made them develop various theories on its function. In terms of function, the optic chiasm had a history based more on speculation, the seventeenth century bringing its first understanding and reaching the peak in the nineteenth century with the understanding of the anatomical structure of the chiasm and its role in the visual process. CONCLUSION: The history of the optic chiasm is a fascinating time travel displaying the conceptual transformations that have been made in anatomy and medicine by our forerunners.

The development of anatomy: from macroscopic body dissections to stem cell-derived organoids.

Anatomy as a descriptive topic of research and instruction in medicine has been increasingly influenced by discoveries in molecular cell and developmental biology and most recently the advent of human induced pluripotent stem cells and organoids. We summarize here how anatomy has been influenced by developmental and stem cell biologists, and how in vitro modelling of the three-dimensional body environment is emerging to understand structure and function of cells during differentiation processes in development and disease.

The hidden symbols of the female anatomy in Michelangelo Buonarroti's ceiling in the Sistine Chapel.

A number of published articles have suggested that each element of Renaissance art contains an inner meaning. Some of these elements include the choice of theme and protagonists, faces selected for the characters, colors used, species of flowers and trees chosen, animals depicted, positions of the elements, posture of the characters and their gestures, juxtapositions in the scenes, and even the very scenario or landscape. All of these elements are thought to have hidden meanings. In this context, this manuscript presents a new hypothesis suggesting that Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) may have concealed symbols associated with female anatomy in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (painted 1508-1512) in Rome. Thus, this paper is useful to better understand the history of anatomy and corroborates recent descriptions that have suggested the possible existence of anatomic figures concealed in many of Michelangelo's works. Clin. Anat. 29:911-916, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.