Anatomy Day 2024
This guide is a companion to Anatomy Day, an annual event held for all first-year medical students to view historical medical atlases from the History of Medicine Collections at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library. This year's anatomy day was held on September 5, 2024.
Each section of this guide lists the items displayed on tables in the Rubenstein Library's Gothic Reading Room during the event. Follow links for each item to its library catalog or collection guide record, including options to request items to view later in the Rubenstein Library Reading Room.
Items relating to the following themes were on display at the 2024 Anatomy Day:
- Early Anatomy - This table addresses classical and medieval ideas of anatomy and the ways that the human body is represented in medieval and early modern anatomical sources.
- Art & Anatomy - This table addresses the intersections of scientific anatomy and artistic representations of the human body.
- Gender & Anatomy - This table addresses the complexities of gender representation in anatomical texts, emphasizing representations of women's bodies and pregnancy.
- Anatomical Theaters - This table explores the role of the anatomical theater, which was a specialized room structured in an amphitheatrical shape so that a large audience of medical students could view the dissection of a body.
- Eastern Medicine - This table addresses representations of the body created by East Asian anatomists, specifically featuring anatomy texts from China and Japan.
- Scientific Racism & Anatomy - This table explores the ways that racist biases in medicine are perpetuated by anatomical text and authors who adopted the authority of science to justify racial inequality.
- Ethics - This table addresses the ethical issues that come along with the production and publication of anatomical texts.
- Four Seasons - This table displays the Four Seasons, a unique set of four copperplate engravings of German or Flemish origin which serve as a metaphor for the phases of human life.
- Anatomical Flapbooks - This table demonstrates the interesting and complex genre of printed media known as anatomical flapbooks. Anatomical flapbooks were used to teach students human anatomy, allowing them to unfold moveable leaves to reveal what lies beneath.
- Neuroanatomy - This table addresses anatomical representations of the nervous system and more specifically the brain.
- Visual Diagnosis - This table focuses on the ways that visual representations of the body were used to diagnose specific conditions or diseases with a particular focus on skin conditions.
