On the production of ancient Egyptian blue: Multi-modal characterization and micron-scale luminescence mapping.

The ancient pigment Egyptian blue has long been studied for its historical significance; however, recent work has shown that its unique visible induced luminescent property can be used both to identify the pigment and to inspire new materials with this characteristic. In this study, a multi-modal characterization approach is used to explore variations in ancient production of Egyptian blue from shabti statuettes found in the village of Deir el-Medina in Egypt (Luxor, West Bank) dating back to the New Kingdom (18th-20th Dynasties; about 1550-1077 BCE). Using quantitative SEM-EDS analysis, we identify two possible production groups of the Egyptian blue and demonstrate the presence of multiple phases within samples using cluster analysis and ternary diagram representations. Using both macro-scale non-invasive (X-rays fluorescence and multi-spectral imaging) and micro-sampling (SEM-EDS and Raman confocal microspectroscopy) techniques, we correlate photoluminescence and chemical composition of the ancient samples. We introduce Raman spectroscopic imaging as a means to capture simultaneously visible-induced luminesce and crystal structure and utilize it to identify two classes of luminescing and non-luminescing silicate phases in the pigment that may be connected to production technologies. The results presented here provide a new framework through which Egyptian blue can be studied and inform the design of new materials based on its luminescent property.

At the origin of "Endocrinology and Art": Woman's Head (third century BCE).

In 1911, the Danish physician Hans Christian Gram (1853-1938) sustained to have found signs of hyperthyroidism in a marble head of a Roman woman that he observed in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. It could be one of the first examples of a clinical diagnosis of an endocrine disease in an ancient statue.

[Study on the excavated wooden carved acupuncture statue of the Western Han Dynasty in Laoguanshan].

The painted red lines on the wooden carved acupuncture statue of Western Han Dynasty in Laoguanshan, illustrate the running courses of the"eleven meridians"on the body surface in the early meridian doctrine. The carved white lines show the body surface running courses of the"twelve meridians"in the meridian doctrine and the Sanjiao images in Sanjiao doctrine. The dots on the wooden carved acupuncture statue are of two categories, one of them is of regulatory, round and concave spots, which are carved before the process of lacquer undercoat. The other category is of different sizes and in irregular forms, which are carved simultaneously with those white lines. Altogether there are over one hundred dots in these two categories, representing the mai shu (transport point of vessels). The wooden carved acupuncture statue reflects the distinct characteristics on the running courses of meridians, Sanjiao doctrine, the nomenclature and localization of"mai shu"in Bianque medicine, which provides the most powerful evidence for the confirmation of the correlation between Laoguanshan excavated documents and Bianque medicine.

A likely cranial osteodystrophy (Paget's disease of bone) in a Precolumbian, Mesoamerican stone sculpture.

This short note illustrates facial and head features found in a stone sculpture of the ancient, Precolumbian period in a temple of the Mayan city of Copan (Honduras). The authors believe that this observation may support paleoanthropological evidence of Paget's disease of bone, an osteodystrophy described in the Mesoamerican Indian populations before the first millennium A.D.

Images of Doctors and their Implements: A Visual Dialogue between the Patient and the Doctor.

Images of physicians, patients, and medical instruments were placed on Graeco-Roman funerary monuments, altars and fresco paintings. These representations are examined here to determine whether there existed a standard convention by which physicians were depicted in order that the lay and possibly illiterate viewers could identify what the scene represented. Greek physicians were frequently shown with cupping vessels, midwives were seen with birthing stools, while Roman physicians were often shown with various surgical implements. It is argued that the correlation between the types of objects depicted with the medical practitioner was deliberately made by the artist to signify the nature of medicine the individual practiced, so that the viewer could identify the role the practitioner had in their society.

The opium poppy as a symbol of sleep in Bertel Thorvaldsen's relief of 1815.

Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) is one of the most remarkable representatives of Neoclassicist sculptural art in Europe, which was largely inspired by the classical art and culture of Greek and Roman antiquity. A pair of marble reliefs, Night and Day, exhibited in the Thorvaldsen Museum (Copenhagen), marks the culmination of Thorvaldsen's relief art and is of particular interest to the history of sleep medicine. In the first relief, Night, an angel with her neck bent and eyes closed has two babies in her embrace and seems to be floating down in grief, with an owl hovering behind her. Her hair is also twined with opium poppies, the symbol of sleep and death in antiquity. Our findings suggest that this relief not only indicates a mythological association between the opium poppy and sleep but also has a strong connotation with the poppy's medicinal use for inducing sleep throughout the centuries.

[Personal motif in art]. / Személyes motívum a müvészetben.

One of the basic questions of the art psychology is whether a personal motif is to be found behind works of art and if so, how openly or indirectly it appears in the work itself. Analysis of examples and documents from the fine arts and literature allow us to conclude that the personal motif that can be identified by the viewer through symbols, at times easily at others with more difficulty, gives an emotional plus to the artistic product. The personal motif may be found in traumatic experiences, in communication to the model or with other emotionally important persons (mourning, disappointment, revenge, hatred, rivalry, revolt etc.), in self-searching, or self-analysis. The emotions are expressed in artistic activity either directly or indirectly. The intention nourished by the artist's identity (Kunstwollen) may stand in the way of spontaneous self-expression, channelling it into hidden paths. Under the influence of certain circumstances, the artist may arouse in the viewer, consciously or unconsciously, an illusionary, misleading image of himself. An examination of the personal motif is one of the important research areas of art therapy.

[Chance meeting of psychiatry and art on the "dissecting table"]. / Pszichiátria és müvészet találkozása a boncasztaton.

This paper shows one of many aspects of the history of the Hungarian psychiatry between the two world wars. The data were collected from the "Hungarian Museum of Mind" opened for the public in 1931. It focuses on the collecting policy and the research topics of Hungarian psychiatrists working in the asylums in those days. In 2007 Lipotmezo (the Hungarian Psychiatric and Neurological Institution the biggest Hungarian asylum since its foundations in 1868) was closed. Its art collection was rescued by the Hungarian Academy of Science. From 2007 this collection has been named The Psychiatric Art Collection of the HAS, maintained by The Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Science. The artistic objects and documents are properly stored and available for research. Two art historians are in charge of curating the exhibitions and leading the research on the psychiatric art in the context of history, psychiatric history and contemporary culture. This work follows the well established practice of the eighties and nineties when the art historian Edit Plesznivy expert in this subject listed the pieces of this historical collection, and through the context of outsider art and art therapy she channeled it into the field of art institutions. Leaving the hospital environment and having been introduced to the academic world the research is looking toward the collection has been changed and new perspectives have been opened. Beside the art works of the patients living as inmates in mental hospitals, the collecting work and therapeutic practices of the mental physicians became a significant research topic also. Arpad Selig as an assistant physician at the Mental and Neurological Clinic in Lipotmezo started to collect the patients' works of art in the first decade of twentieth century. During the 1920s he was appointed the director of Angyalfold Asylum found in 1883. Selig died in 1929 and the Museum of Mind named after its enthusiastic founder Selig was registered in the official list of museums in 1932. In the 1930s Istvan Zsako the physician director of Angyalfold Asylum took care of the collection. He enriched it with further historical documents on the institution, bibliographies, press cuts, tableaux and photographic albums referring to the institution and the research practiceses of the physicians. After Zsako was appointed the director of Lipotmezo the collections of Lipotmezo and Angyalfold were joined. The collection suffered during the World War II and this period is can be viewed as a caesura in the practice of collecting. Later, from the late fifties, the physician Fekete Janos, head of the nurse training in Lipotmezo was in charge of the collection. He focused on sorting and installation of the remnants and also collected new works of the inpatients. During the seventies the psychotherapy was inaugurated and in the eighties the art therapy exercises began. However, through the reconstruction of the therapeutical and collecting practices show that these evolving art therapy practices partly rooted in the work of psychiatric treatment in the twenties and thirties. Psychiatrists, who lived in the asylums too, supported the so called "noble entertainments" - including artistic drawing, painting, reading and playing musical instruments - and as a part of the daily routines of these mental institutions they formed a locally particular modus operandi of therapy. The inmates of the asylums, the physicians and patients cooperated to enrich the collection which was a venue to represent the life of the institution and to demonstrate the research of the physicians. Despite of the significant differences between the pre- and postwar periods concerning the sociocultural and political structures there is a well defined connection between "curing and curating".

[Emancipation of the works of artists with psychiatric illness - Artistic reflections from the twentieth century and the Art Brut]. / Pszichiátriai beteg alkotók müveinek évszádos emancipációja - XX. századi kézömüvészeti reflexiók és az art brut.

The study presents the emancipation of the artworks of psychiatric patients through the review of four centuries, focusing on some of the most important medical cultural and art historical stages of the period between the 18th and the 21st century, which is a particularly relevant era in this regard. It touches on the collections linked to psychiatrists and hospitals that were formed primarily on the basis of the researches that were analyzing the connection between creativity and mental illness. After that, the study discusses the ever-changing attitudes and preferences of artists' and major artistic movements towards psychosis and the pictorial world of the psychotic. With great care, it analyses the aesthetic category of the art brut, which is connected to the French painter Jean Dubuffet and was born in the middle of the 1940s, and the relationship between contemporary art and art brut. In connection with some of the most significant art brut collections and exhibitions, the works of a few classical and contemporary art brut artists are also discussed (Adolf Wolfli, Louis Soutter, Aloise Corbaz, August Walla ).

Tall guys and fat ladies: Grimaldi's Upper Paleolithic burials and figurines in an historical perspective.

The importance of the Grimaldi complex of caves and rock shelters is twofold: scientific and historical. Scientifically, it is one of the major Upper Paleolithic sites, considering the variety of mobiliary and parietal art, the number of single and multiple burials and associated grave goods, and the abundant lithic and fauna remains. Historically, the documentation of activity that took place in this site starting from the second half of the 19 th century and the studies carried out on the materials that have been recovered in the decades between 1870s-1910s, provide instructive examples of methods and goals of Paleolithic archeology and anthropology of the epoch. This paper combines the scientific and the historic interest of the site through a chronicle of the events that took place during the period of the most sensational discoveries, i.e. beginning with the identification in 1872 of the first Upper Paleolithic burial and ending with the results of the excavations carried out in 1901 at Grotte des Enfants published in four volumes a few years later. The paper discusses early interpretations and modern views on the different findings and documents changes in perspectives and goals of paleoanthropological research in over a century, raising some of the major issues of contemporary Upper Paleolithic studies.

[Presence of terms for birds, aquatic animals and insects in medical language]. / La présence des volatiles, des animaux aquatiques et des insectes dans le langage médical.

After a first lecture, in April 2013, about the presence of mammals in medical language, the author gives another part of his panorama of animal metaphors used in medicine, focusing this time on the birds, aquatic animals and insects. The second part of this study confirms that animals, or at least the image of them in the past, were regularly present in medical nosology.