The Art of Medicine: Over 2,000 Years of Images and Imagination

by Julie Anderson, Emm Barnes, Emma Shackleton

Since ancient times people have depended on medical practitioners to enhance life, to treat illness and injuries, and to help reduce pain and suffering. The scientifically based discipline that we know today stands beside diverse traditions, belief systems, and bodies of medical knowledge that have evolved in fascinating ways across cultures and continents. Throughout this history, successive generations have created artistic representations of these varied aspects of medicine, illustrating instruction manuals, documenting treatments, and creating works of art that enable individuals to express their feelings and ideas about medicine, health, and illness. From ancient wall paintings and tomb carvings to sculpture, installations, and digitally created artworks, the results are extraordinary and pay tribute to how medicine has affected our lives and the lives of our ancestors.               Drawing on the remarkable holdings of the Wellcome Collection in London, The Art of Medicine offers a unique gallery of rarely seen paintings, artifacts, drawings, prints, and extracts from manuscripts and manuals to provide a fascinating visual insight into our knowledge of the human body and mind, and how both have been treated with medicine. Julie Anderson, Emm Barnes, and Emma Shackleton take readers on a fascinating visual journey through the history of medical practice, exploring contemporary biomedical images, popular art, and caricature alongside venerable Chinese scrolls, prehistoric Mesoamerican drawings, paintings of the European Renaissance, medieval Persian manuscripts, and more. The result is a rare and remarkable visual account of what it was and is to be human in sickness and health.

Genres: Medicine, Art, Nonfiction, History, Historical, Medical, Science

256 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2011

Reviews

[Gisele Toumi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative! Though it seemed the information was presented in a plain/superficial manner (maybe that's because the audience was the general population and not just STEMies)

[Mariam Bawa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and educational read. It explores how different cultures perceived the human body and how it is similar and different to modern day anatomy.

[Laila Tarek · Rating 5 out of 5]

went through for class.

[Cheryl Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting to see how medical procedures, ailments, and even advertisements were depicted through the ages.

[Loveliest Evaris · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the greatest compilations of medicine-influenced art I have ever read, or will read. It starts at the beginning, with primitive tapestries and diagrams of the human body as each culture and religion saw it. Chakra points, the four humors, the organs where they were believed to be (human dissection was not allowed by the church until after the Black Death, so the best they could do was draw references from pigs, who have similar anatomy to us), and much, much more. You can see how culture and religion plays a part in what human physiology was centuries ago, and the steps taken forward as medicine began to evolve and mature into more science than magic.

Da Vinci's drawings are in here, as well as charms and amulets from tribes of Africa, medical pages, bottles of medicine to cure things like coughs, and portrayals of disease as skeletons, winged figures, demons, etc. The art in the Rennaissance section was absolutely beautiful; I especially liked the paintings of the woman with the stomach seemingly cut open to reveal the baby inside her as she sat, and the red, white, and gray chalking of a naked woman caressing herself with her back to us, revealing her spinal cord with all the ligaments shown in such detail.

I highly recommend this book for those wishing to see art in its stages, for medicine and its development comes with its own artistic style and history, as well as its own development and stages that you can see for your very eyes in this book.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book from a Goodreads giveaway, so thank you Goodreads!
The book is really good and helpful. I found out interesting things I never knew, especially about Psychiatry, which I'm most interested in.

[Jules The Book Junkie Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful picture book containing drawings, engravings, paintings and micrographs of medical procedures, ailments, anatomy, etc. i particularly liked the painting John Dee Performing an Experiment Before Queen Elizabeth 1 (pg. 152) and the glass sculpture of the H1N1 Swine Flu Virus (pg. 166)

[Andrew R · Rating 3 out of 5]

A British view of the subject. Pretty much ignored American art, but that's to be expected from the Brits.