On the back of #Halloween last week the spookiness continues with a #skeletons theme
Firstly, with some images from two books from the Nurses’ Reference Library:
This Students’ Atlas of Bones and Ligaments c 1880 provides detailed drawings and descriptions for different sections of the skeleton but begins with a plate featuring a typical male skeleton on the left, the female skeleton the right and a newborn infant skeleton in the middle (the black line on the left indicates scale). The authors engage in the own gender myth-making describing the female skeleton as being “more graceful”!! Bonkers!
Some others examples include:
From Descriptive Atlas of Anatomy, 1880
The Greek “Sleeping Beauty” Endymion seen with a skull on the right reminding us that the cost of eternal youth and beauty results in another kind of “death” – eternal sleep/complete passivity. From ‘Cockalorum’ 1950.
Above: the cautionary tale of Tommy and His Soup in ‘Struwwelpeter’, c 1860 who after refusing his soup wastes away, taking on a rather skeletal look before he dies!
Natalie