Picturing the body : five centuries of medical images an exhibition at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine / Ken Arnold.

  • Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.
Date:
1993
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: Picturing the body : five centuries of medical images an exhibition at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine / Ken Arnold. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Rudolf Virchow, Die Cellularpathologie. Berlin, 1858. This ground-breaking work in the history of pathology systematized a body of facts into a theory of health and disease based on the cell. The basis of disease, argued Virchow, was the disruption of cellular functions. The book became a foundational text for microscopists, whose instrument was an essential tool in the study of this ulti- mate unit of living beings. Plates from Arthur Hill Hassall, The microscopic anatomy of the human body, in health and disease. London, [1849]. In Hassall's own words, this is the 'first complete book' on the subject in the English language. In upwards of 400 illustrations, it attempted systematically to examine with a microscope 'all the fluids, tissues and organs of the body'. Work on the book involved many visits to autopsies at St George's Hospital. The microscope illustra- tions were drawn from Hassall's own preparations by Henry Miller, who he had personally trained. Plate from Sir Edward Sharpey-Schafer, Schafer's essentials of histology. 16th edition. London, 1954. It was under the influence of William Sharpey, the teacher whose name he later added to his own, that Edward Schafer took up the study of histology. Schafer's con- siderable number of investigative contributions included work on internal secretions, later called hormones, and the discovery of adrenaline. Pages from Sir Edward Sharpey-Schafer, A course of practical histology. London, 1877. Sharpey-Schafer helped to promote physiology in England at a time when the science was far more energetically pursued in France and Germany. The figure from this book for students shows the operation of a simple warming apparatus, by which the blood of warm-blooded animals and humans could be kept near body temperature while under microscopical observation. Pages from Dame Honor Bridget Fell, 'Notebooks and drawings'. a) 'Embryology and Cytology Drawings' b) Embryology of Organs' From 1929 to 1970 Honor Fell was Director of Strangeways Research Laboratory. Much of the research pursued there was devoted to cell biology. Fell herself made a very significant contribution to the development and application of organ culture techniques, in particular to the study of cells in bone, cartilage and associated tissue. CMAC PP/HBF/A8, A9