Illustrations constitute an essential element of learning anatomy in modern times. However it required a significant evolutionary process spread over centuries, for illustrations to achieve the present status in the subject of anatomy. This review article attempts to outline the evolutionary process by highlighting on the works of esteemed anatomists in a chronological manner. Available literature suggests that illustrations were not used in anatomy during the classical period when the subject was dominated by the descriptive text of Galen. Guido da Vigevano was first to use illustrations in anatomy during the Late Middle Ages and this concept developed further during the Renaissance period when Andreas Vesalius pioneered in illustrations becoming an indispensable tool in conveying anatomical details. Toward later stages of the Renaissance period, Fabricius ab Aquapendente endeavored to restrict dramatization of anatomical illustrations which was a prevalent trend in early Renaissance. During the 18th century, anatomical artwork was characterized by the individual styles of prominent anatomists leading to suppression of anatomical details. In the 19th century, Henry Gray used illustrations in his anatomical masterpiece that focused on depicting anatomical structures and were free from any artistic style. From early part of the 20th century medical images and photographs started to complement traditional handmade anatomical illustrations. Computer technology and advanced software systems played a key role in the evolution of anatomical illustrations during the late 20th century resulting in new generation 3D image datasets that are being used in the 21st century in innovative formats for teaching and learning anatomy.

/pdf/evolution-of-illustrations-in-anatomy-a-study-from-the-4mdnq0eux0.pdf

Evolution of illustrations in anatomy: A study from the classical period in Europe to modern times

If studying anatomy in medical school promotes clinical detachment, how do lay people respond to the crash course in anatomy they receive on visiting the Korperwelten / Body Worlds exhibition? If late modernity's celebration of the living body makes the dead body problematic, how do visitors respond to the aestheticised dead bodies on display? Through examining the written comments of visitors, the article identifies a number of responses. The chief is an elementary scientific gaze in which obvious interest is shown in anatomical details. But because the exhibits are dry, odourless and anonymous, this does not generate the defence of emotional detachment; indeed, among several emotional responses, are fascination and, for some, awe. Body Worlds is less a popularised anatomy lab than a shrine to the human body, a shrine in which medically untrained people can look at the body in new ways.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.0141-9889.2004.00401.x

Body Worlds: clinical detachment and anatomical awe

Although the contribution to anatomical illustration by Vesalius and his followers has received much attention, less credit has been given to Veslingius and particularly Fabricius. By 1600, Fabricius had amassed more than 300 paintings that together made the Tabulae Pictae, a great atlas of anatomy that was highly admired by his contemporaries. Many of his new observations were incorporated into subsequent books, including those by Casserius, Spighelius, Harvey and Veslingius. Also of importance were the Tabulae by Eustachius (1552), which, although only published in 1714, greatly influenced anatomical wax modelling. In 1742, Pope Benedict XIV established a Museum of Anatomy in Bologna, entrusting to Ercole Lelli the creation of several anatomical preparations in wax. Felice Fontana realised that the production of a large number of models by the casting method would make cadaveric specimens superfluous for anatomical teaching and in 1771 he asked the Grand Duke to fund a wax-modelling workshop in Florence as part of the Natural History Museum, later known as La Specola. Fontana engaged Giuseppe Ferrini as his first modeller and then the 19-year-old Clemente Susini who, by his death in 1814, had superintended the production of, or personally made, more than 2000 models. In 1780, the Austrian Emperor Joseph II visited La Specola and ordered a great number of models for his Josephinum museum; these were made by Fontana with the help of Clemente Susini and supervised by the anatomist Paolo Mascagni. It is, however, in Cagliari that some of Susini’s greatest waxes are to be found. These were made when he was free of Fontana’s influence and were based on dissections made by Francesco Antonio Boi (University of Cagliari). Their distinctive anatomical features include the emphasis given to nerves and the absence of lymphatics in the brain, a mistake made on earlier waxes. The refined technical perfection of the anatomical details demonstrates the closeness of the cooperation between Susini and Boi, whereas the expressiveness of the faces and the harmony of colours make the models of Cagliari masterpieces of figurative art.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1469-7580.2009.01157.x

The evolution of anatomical illustration and wax modelling in Italy from the 16th to early 19th centuries

The history of anatomy includes not only professors and the support of their institutions but also medical students. Because medical students were quick to assess a teacher's pedagogy, their complaints tell us a great deal about the transition from Galenic to Aristotelian projects of anatomy. When Fabricius of Aquapendente instituted a new style of anatomical inquiry, one based on Aristotle and the search for universal principles, students repeatedly complained that his demonstrations did not provide technical education in structural anatomy (as demonstrations employing a hands-on, Galenic pedagogy did). Within the new anatomy theater (the second of its kind in Padua), however, students were persuaded to accept Fabricius's demonstrations. Fabricius's philosophical orientation combined with the formal atmosphere and aesthetic features of the new theater to create anatomy demonstrations that relied on orations and music for their structure (rather than on the progressive stages of human dissection). A place that emphasized a discourse of anatomy as the study of the "secrets of nature," the new theater so effectively publicized a new style of anatomy that a larger, more diverse group of spectators attended subsequent demonstrations and participated in the celebration of leading academic figures as well as the institution of the university.

A History of Anatomy Theaters in Sixteenth-Century Padua

The pen and the sword: recovering the disciplinary identity of physiology and anatomy before 1800: II: Old anatomy—the sword

The central proposition of this book is that the great anatomists of the Renaissance, from Vesalius to Fabricius and Harvey - the forebears of modern scientific biology and medicine - consciously resurrected not merely the methods but also the research projects of Aristotle and other Ancients. The Moderns' choice of topics and subjects, their aims, and their evaluation of their investigations were all made in a spirit of emulation, not rejection, of their distant predecessors. First published in 1997, Andrew Cunningham’s masterly analysis of the history of the ’scientific renaissance' - a history not of things found, but of projects of enquiry - provoked a reappraisal of the intellectual roots of the Renaissance as well as illuminating debates on the history of the body and its images.

The Anatomical Renaissance: The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients

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The Anatomical Renaissance: The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients