[Okuda wooden human skeleton made in Edo era, Japan].

ABSTRACT

Probably in 1820 (late Edo era), a human skeleton for medical education was carved from cypress wood, based on a criminal's skeleton under the supervision of a medical doctor, Banri Okuda in Osaka City. The skeleton is called "Okuda wooden skeleton" and is now housed in the National Science Museum, Tokyo. The bones can be assembled into a skeleton by metal pivots or bamboo sticks. The thorax and pelvis were made of several pieces of wood and combined together, respectively. By and large, the wooden skeleton shows morphological characteristics usually seen in early middle-aged females of the Edo era. But the claviculae, distal ends of the femora, and the patellae are exceptionally larger than those of a female, implying that these bones of the original skeleton had already been lost or were deformed before the wooden skeleton was made. Actually the wooden skeleton might not have been used for medical education but rather for the promotion of European medicine, which was gradually developing in the Edo era.