Book Review
How the Wound Man Healed Medieval Europe
In a new book, art historian Jack Hartnell reconsiders the gruesome image as “one of the period’s most sophisticated repositories of medical hope.”
medicine
Features
An Artist and a Historian Plumb Gynecology’s Hidden Histories
Nao Bustamante and Wendy Kline explore the racist, sexist, would-be-very-illegal-today methods through which we’ve come to understand the medical field.
Film
New Doc Breaks the Silence Around Endometriosis
More often than not, the message from the US healthcare system to endometriosis sufferers is that their pain is all in their heads.
Film
A Documentary Unravels the Danger of Being Black and Pregnant in the US
Aftershock, directed by Tonya Lewis Lee and Paula Eiselt, explains the disproportionate rate of Black maternal mortality in the US.
Art
Art Classes Are Helping Transform Medical Education
Classes like Anne Willieme’s are part of the burgeoning field of medical humanities, which aims to tackle the disciplinary divide between art and science.
News
The Archive of Healing, a Trove of Medicinal Folklore, Is Now Online
Hundreds of thousands of entries describe cures, rituals, and healing methods spanning two centuries, with a focus on protecting Indigenous knowledge.
Books
Drug Culture: Picturing Pharmaceuticals Since 1850
PhotoRx: Pharmacy in Photography Since 1850 explores a pharmaceutical company's collection of art on drugs.
Books
The Dynamic Brain Drawings of the Father of Modern Neuroscience
A publication from Abrams Books and a traveling exhibit currently at the Weisman Art Museum highlight the medical illustrations of Santiago Ramón y Cajal.
Art
When Dissection Was a Criminal Punishment Worse Than Death
Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse is an online exhibition that unearths the macabre history of anatomy and criminal punishment.
Art
Responding to Human Remains with Crocheted Skeletons and Beaded Organs
Sabrina Small and Caitlin McCormack explore the life and decay of the human body in sculptural fiber art at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.
Performance
An Opera Revisits the Grisly Public Dissections of the 18th Century
An anatomical theater and its dissected murderess are the subjects of a bloody opera on the physical nature of evil.
Art
An Unlikely East-West Collaboration in 1830s Portraits of Tumor Patients
Guangzhou, then called Canton by Westerners, was the only Chinese port open to foreign trading until the Opium Wars of the 19th century, and it became a rare hub of direct interactions between the two cultures. One of these resulted in a surprisingly moving series of paintings portraying bodies disf