Joanna Ebenstein (ed.): Frederik Ruysch and his Thesaurus Anatomicus. A Morbid Guide. (The MIT Press, 2022)

The newest book by Joanna Ebenstein was released on 20 September 2022. I attended a Zoom symposium earlier on that month to celebrate this new book. During those four hours I made some quick notes and on the top of the A4 paper I had written “Science meet art”.  This book happened when Ebenstein met...

A Famous Portrait of Louis Pasteur by Albert Edelfelt

A famous chemist and microbiologist, Louis Pasteur was born 200 years ago, on 27 December 1822. But I am not writing about him, but I want you to pay a little bit of attention on the most famous portrait made of him. The reason for my relatively short blog post of today is the fact...

Remembering Dr. Knox for Wrong Reasons

The Scottish anatomist Robert Knox died on 20 December 1862. I had planned to write a blog post about his life to be published on the anniversary date, but I have changed my mind. This is not a post about him, but about the reasons why I don't write the planned article. I have dealt...

Joanna Ebenstein and Colin Dickey: The Morbid Anatomy Anthology (Morbid Anatomy Press, 2014)

The Morbid Anatomy Anthology was released already in 2014, but I still want to present this book as it's definitely worth it. And, what’s the best, you can still get it in relatively easily, either as a new book or as a second hand. The latter ones are much cheaper.  The Morbid Anatomy Anthology is...

Cyclopaedia à la TMTWNBBFN, Part XII: Supply & Demand

Cyclopaedia à la The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing is a series about songs by a London based band The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing. Or to be precise, this series is not about their songs as such, but short stories about people or things that they have written...

Joanna Ebenstein: The Anatomical Venus (Thames & Hudson, 2016)

Joanna Ebenstein's book The Anatomical Venus was published in 2016 and I bought my copy several years ago from London and I started working on the presentation several months ago, but finally I am ready to publish my story about this fascinating book. Even though my road with the book was a long one, I...

The Life of Joseph Lister as Told by Lindsey Fitzharris in The Butchering Art

Joseph Lister was born on 5 April 1827. There are lots of material about him available online that covers his life and work, so there is no point to rewrite the story. Instead I base my story on Lindsey Fitzharris's book, which whole name is The Butchering Art. Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly...

William Hogarth: The Reward of Cruelty

'The Reward of Cruelty' is the last image of William Hogarth's series The Four Stages of Cruelty that was published in February 1751. It is one of my favourite engravings from Hogarth and thus I decided to close this year by it. I wrote earlier this month a presentation about Jacqueline Riding's book called Hogarth. Life...

Robert Knox, the Anatomist

Robert Knox was born on 4 September 1791. He was said to be a good anatomist, but the later generations don’t remember him because of his professional skills, but because of his connections with infamous couple Burke and Hare. This story is not about the Burke and Hare case, but about Robert Knox, a man...