Nuns With Bleeding Eyes! Illustrations of 19th C Surgery

Back when I had TV, one of the channels I would find myself lingering on was the surgery channel. I can’t describe the feeling I experienced as I watched the innards of someone I didn’t know pulsating under bright lights and flashing steel instruments – kind of a combination of chills, queasiness and captivation. I had a love-hate relationship with it, but I kept coming back for more. So when I stumbled across these awesome illustrations of 19th Century surgical techniques, I flashed back to those shiny, clinical images, but in a much more artistic form. Pictured are amputations, incisions, caesarians and eyeball punctures, but all beautifully rendered in a series of gorgeous 19th Century illustrations. These all hail from the book Crucial Interventions: An Illustrated Treatise on the Principles & Practice of Nineteenth-Century Surgery by Dr Richard Barnett (available here). These are nice images – stay tuned for the really gross ones…
3 Comments
I love how these drawings are presented in a way that is so gruesome, yet clinically detached. Can’t wait to see what the rest of the book has to offer.
Jay Sillence
This one by Barnett is great too!
http://www.amazon.de/The-Sick-Rose-Disease-Illustration/dp/1938922409