Art imitates life

September 19, 2004 1:21 AM

Explore your inner beauty. Under our skin, we are all so strange and fragile. Sometimes, we like to frighten ourselves with that fact. Sometimes, we like to turn it into art. No matter how far we advance, the human head and heart will always house awe for our lovely mysteries. (Warning: graphic medical images and animation.)
posted by melissa may (5 comments total)

I like the topic and style of this post but there are too many links to websites selling stuff!
posted by mokey at 3:12 AM on September 19, 2004

Mokey, it's funny you should mention that. This post arose from a search I did for someone seeking free, high-quality medical art. As far as I can tell, there isn't any -- it's just too labor-intensive and expensive to create, especially the CAD stuff. (If someone does know of such a source, that would probably be a great post in its own right.) But in the process, I found a lot of free samples and cool stuff in general to gawk at, so I wanted to share it.

(Also, I do editing for medical journals, and I've seen a lot of poor medical art as a result, so I am very respectful of how beautifully most of the professionals do it.)
posted by melissa may at 4:49 AM on September 19, 2004

Wow, that birth thing was wild! Makes me wonder how I survived that after all!
posted by Eekacat at 6:11 AM on September 19, 2004

Wonderful post. I watched the birth animation ("mysteries" link) over and over -- it gave me a much better idea of what goes on than watching actual films of deliveries.
posted by languagehat at 6:56 AM on September 19, 2004

When I was really little, I remember after looking at the anatomy transparencies in the encyclopedia, I had a nightmare that a human nervous system was chasing me through the house.
posted by alumshubby at 10:06 AM on September 20, 2004