skeletonsI like old weird things. I especially love the look of copper plate prints, when they are used in scientific textbooks (Bonus points if they use the word “Plate”).

Today I’m going to put together some of my favorite sites on the net that show old medical illustrations. These are a great inspiration to me, and I hope you might appreciate them too.

Digatal Clendening Shows us a small selection of high quality images of skeletons, operating theatres and other assorted weirdness. One of the most comprehensive sections is this one. An assortment of categories with chronologically sorted images. For the ephemera i love I can’t seem to get away from this bit: Chinese Public Health Posters. Piles of weird images in there.

Dream Anatomy Has a giant collection of the more surreal side of the art of medical illustration. Made by the National Library of medicine, the collection is professional and unique. The images are broken down in to categories. One of my favorite is Body Part as Art showing cadavers playing instruments and dancing. You can see the entire gallery here.

There is more to see from them here as well. They have catalogued dozens of books and scanned in the images. This book is one of my favorites. It shows skeletons in a band as well as this hauntingly strange etching.