LIFE-SIZE ANATOMICAL PRINT
Skeleton with musculature, anonymous copper engraving made around 1820, coloured by a later hand. Size: (paper) 180 x 67 cm.
This life-size anatomical print was used for education purposes at a time when the art of healing was turning into modern medicine. The mapping of human anatomy was completed and further systematized at that time. Here we see the human skeleton from the back, with details of the musculature on the left and the bone structure on the right, above and below the cervical spine and foot.
Until the late 19th century knowledge of healing was still limited and the skill of the doctor depended on intelligence, inventiveness and guts. You had all sorts of people that practised medicine: people who sincerely, carefully and critically practiced the art of healing, people who experimented with outlandish ideas and achieved surprising results, as well as people who believed in their own methods and means, but achieved questionable results: quacks.
In the Netherlands, medicine was not given scientific status until 1865 under prime minister Thorbecke, and training was institutionalized. Lessons in anatomy then no longer took place in anatomical theatres, but in classrooms and on the basis of medical collections.
Price: Euro 1.950,- (incl. frame)
