Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Medical Illustration

Episode Date: September 21, 2018

We take for granted that we know what bodies look like on the inside, but this week on Sawbones we honor those brave pioneers that had to draw them for the very first time. Also Dr. Sydnee and Justin ...explore the scandal behind the most famous book of medical illustrations. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. Hello everybody and welcome to Saul Bones, where I'm able to with Miss Guy to Medicine,
Starting point is 00:01:08 I'm your co-host Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. Are you gonna do that voice every week now? Is that you? If I had a streak of it going, you have. Okay, I won't anymore. I'm just excited to be alive. Excited to be me, excited to be alive.
Starting point is 00:01:21 Excited to next week go to Portland and Seattle. Me too. In the PNW, as everyone there refers to it, the Pacific Northwest. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm aware of the Pacific Northwest, but I'd never heard PNW.
Starting point is 00:01:38 You think they already got their Halloween decorations up? Why? Why would you think Halloween hits the West Coast first? I just don't know. You're trying to see him sprout up right here. I don't know if they get deep into it. It's gonna be a little cooler there, which I'm kind of looking forward to. Ah, so of course. I'm kind of thinking that maybe, um, you know, maybe the hustle and Halloween decorations. You just think that because you think it's kind of a spooky part of the country. So powerful.'s like twin peaks is from that area
Starting point is 00:02:06 and obviously twilight. And area Indiana. That's it, no. The thing is, that's Indiana. We were talking about Seattle and how did we get there? So it's a Seattle and then we were thinking about like, we like to do locally themed shows,
Starting point is 00:02:23 which we are not going to do this time for reasons that we come out of it. And we're thinking about like, we like to do locally themed shows, which we are not gonna do this time for reasons that we come out of it. And we're talking about Seattle, we're talking about Grey's Anatomy. And it's like, is there something there with the Grey's Anatomy? Not the, right. So Grey's Anatomy, the TV show,
Starting point is 00:02:37 which takes its name from Grey's Anatomy, the book, which the Grey is spelled different. I feel like, I am, so I'm very curious. I feel like I'm not to impune the quality of the show. I've never watched it really. I feel like every time I see that show is still on, I'm like, wow, that show is still on, huh? I watched it for a while and then I kind of lost interest because for me, the medicine was the more interesting part of all those medical shows. Right. When you spend so much time on romantic drama, just not my thing.
Starting point is 00:03:09 It has, that show has been on for 14 seasons, 317 episodes are you kidding me? I also find those shows way more interesting when they're in residency and stuff. And once they're attendings, I don't know. Less intriguing. But may I say that as a boring attending myself? But what did this get us? So anyway, I started, I started looking into the history of the book Gray's Anatomy. The book the show is based on? Yes. I mean, based on the title only, let me say. I mean, based on the entitled Only, let me say. Not based on.
Starting point is 00:03:45 Adapted from. And then it started to get me thinking about like the history of anatomical drawings, like the medical illustrations, the artwork of drawing bodies, I guess. Okay. Because that's a, that was an important skill that was developed over time that kind of evolved alongside art
Starting point is 00:04:07 in order for us to study and understand the human body. Right? I mean, how else do you communicate what's inside a body unless you have like pictures of it? No, we don't. We don't have photos for sure. No, that's not. Well, no, no, not at the ancient history, you're right. I'm saying, in the point that we had to start with like probably cave drawings and stuff of like, this is a butt, in case you see one of these between the legs and the stomach.
Starting point is 00:04:34 Here's what you're working with, it's a butt. Why does it have a hole? Why does it have a crack? We don't know, we plan to write some good jokes about it here in the next few millennia, but we're still in the dark on butts. Well, we know they're called butts. Good. I look at Jerry has positioned himself on his, on a rock. He calls it sitting. Is this the purpose of butts? We do not know.
Starting point is 00:05:02 So we've done a whole episode. Sitting may be the devil. Might be cursed. You might be cursed because Jerry said his legs started to tingle with magic. After he sat, he did past tense. Oh, by the way, he invented past tense too. And he invented the past tense of sitting, which is sat, the gerund. What did I say? His legs are tingling.
Starting point is 00:05:23 So obviously, let's try some blood letting let some of the blood out. That seems blood for sitting. That seems like the first treatment. Okay, so we've talked about the history of dissection and I'm I'm I'm going to go into that just a little we've done a whole episode about it so I don't want to belabor the point but obviously before we could draw pictures of the inside of the human body, we had to see it. The word anatomy, by the way, dates back to the ancient Greek for cutting up or taking apart.
Starting point is 00:05:52 So anatomy, while it describes, you know, it is our anatomy. We're talking about the thing that is our body and the stuff inside it. Cutting it up or taking apart and looking at it as intrinsic to the word itself. Hypocrites was not big on dissection. It just wasn't really done back at that time. The idea of cutting into the human body was first of all kind of taboo. And secondly, it was thought to be dangerous. Even before the concept of what an infection was, the idea of a dead body was, again, and I'm using the word infected,
Starting point is 00:06:34 they would not have used that exact word because they didn't know about germs, yeah. But there was something contaminated about the body and to cut into it would contaminate you as well. So you wouldn't have been doing a lot of dissections back in that time, but he did make a lot of observations about external parts and accidentally viewed internal parts through wounds and things like that. But he didn't do drawings, at least that I could find anywhere based on that.
Starting point is 00:07:04 And the other thing too, as I started to think about, but why was anybody drawing anything? Well, also, it would be unlikely that some of that stuff would exist still. I mean, it's not as easy to copy as text. Sure. You know, so, and that's part of this story as well. The first dissection was probably done by Herophilus in Alexandria in the third century BCE
Starting point is 00:07:28 with the help of his assistant Eras Arastratus. Arastratus. I'm assuming this is a post-mortem to use a fancy term. Yes. And what do the doctors do? I guess autopsy, if you will, but dissection as well. I mean, I think you're, I think you could use those words at this time interchangeably, but it's really you have different purposes, you know.
Starting point is 00:07:51 Right. For yes. What I, when I, when I- Sex and educational about the body. Yeah. And autopsy is specific to learning about the victim of the perp as they say. Now again, I'm just, or, we don't have to be a crime. Like the perp as they say. Now again, I'm just, or,
Starting point is 00:08:06 we're gonna have to be a crime. Like, we're just causing death. That's the one I was saying on TV, we're crime. Well, sure, the ones you've seen on TV, do you know those are also fake, right? What do you got next? Except for one time, but we'll get into that. Whoa.
Starting point is 00:08:18 He was celebrated by the scientific community for doing this dissection, and he was given the title, the father of anatomy, because he was the first one to be like, Hey, I, I thought that's gone. But okay. God, the holy father of God, Abraham, that's your opinion. Okay, everybody sees that differently. From his descriptions, we got a better understanding of things like veins
Starting point is 00:08:45 and arteries. He described reproductive organs. He described the pancreas. He wrote a lot about the process of childbirth. However, it was later reported that he performed like 600 vivisections. So some of them like partial dissections on Prisoners Maybe some while they were still alive. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh No, so I don't think there were as many rules at that time if any about Humane treatment of people even if they were prisoners or even if they were sentenced to death. I think that, and you'll see this kind of. This dude's gonna be for anyway.
Starting point is 00:09:29 Well, you see this theme where it's like, well, they've been sentenced to death, so we may as well. And that's not- Like, that's wild. I wish I'd been there, because I'd been like, my dude were all sentenced to death.
Starting point is 00:09:41 Like, can we not, please? At the school there in Alexandria, you see some of the first anatomical drawings that were created based on these dissections. So he created this culture that you could dissect a human body that after, I mean, hopefully after, but maybe sometimes before someone had died,
Starting point is 00:10:00 it was acceptable to open up their body and take a look to try to learn more about the human body with the goal that we could take this information and do something helpful with it someday, right? But you couldn't easily reproduce any of these drawings. You would have had to draw them again if you wanted to put them in a book and give them to somebody. So obviously, that was a whole other... It's a problem with all of the exchange of knowledge at this point, right? Like you lose the original, that's it. Yeah, because you got to write it again, because we don't have a printing press.
Starting point is 00:10:34 So yeah. Spoilers, sheesh. I think everybody knows it in the third century BC. We didn't have the printing press. Now I just see your spoiler, the printing press is going to give it. I imagine that big, a big milestone for this. Some people may not know.
Starting point is 00:10:49 They don't wanna ruin it for every, like some people may not know. Some people might not know. Some people may not know. That was one of those, there might be some people who are like, how are they gonna solve this? That was one of those things that I feel like
Starting point is 00:10:58 they taught me in history class though. And I remember thinking, why do I need to know that this happened? I mean, like obviously I'm aware. And then we have computers, so it doesn't matter. But yeah, that's weird, okay. I mean, you know, need to know that this happened? I mean, like, obviously I'm aware. And then we have computers, that doesn't matter. But yeah, that's weird. OK. I mean, you know, like, didn't everybody learn that?
Starting point is 00:11:09 And then the printing press. Yeah, but like, you should not, oh my god, didn't he? I'm not going to. You're turning into a real Justin on this, and I need you to keep moving. OK. So this put an end to dissections for a while
Starting point is 00:11:23 because of some of the issues surrounding possible live dissection of human beings, and then there were some that created even more cultural taboos around the processes of anatomical dissection. And so it wasn't done for a while after that. Galen, who we trust a lot of his medical writings and drawings and descriptions of the human body and things, was basically using all of his predecessors stuff to create all of that.
Starting point is 00:11:53 He wasn't doing these dissections himself. He was basing it on what other people had said and drawn and described. He was looking at wounds of gladiators. He, a lot of what he derived about the human body was just from looking at open wounds from gladiators. Some of it was crafty though. I kind of give it up. They got you know a way to get a peek inside. Here. That's like the that's like the the the extreme version of the post sports game interviews like hey champ come on over if you could just one second
Starting point is 00:12:28 Yeah, if I could just bother you for one second. How do you feel when I'm up there? I just want to if I can just duck my head inside this spear wound Not a lion don't lie and do that. We don't really give it our all and them So he would also dissect monkeys and, there was a lot of assumption made that any primate anatomy would do kind of when we're describing human anatomy. I mean, starting from the point we were starting at, it's not completely wrong, right? He, well, I mean, he, he definitely got stuff wrong. Um, and this was a big, I mean, I don't know if I say there's a big problem, like I'm hating on Galen,
Starting point is 00:13:08 but the reason this became such a big problem is because he was considered the authority. So as time goes on, and actual dissections start to take place again, and you're holding up these images of what we find in actual human bodies versus these images that what we find in actual human bodies versus these images that Galen created based on word of mouth and monkeys. People would actually say, well, I guess it's just
Starting point is 00:13:34 that this body is wrong because it couldn't be that Galen was wrong. I mean, you would look at the evidence before your eyes and still say, well, the cadaver must be wrong. It's got to be, Galen couldn't have been wrong. That's humans for you. It wasn't until the middle ages that dissections really started up again.
Starting point is 00:13:53 And then you see more drawings produced from that. There were some figures that were doing public dissections at this time, which obviously would help with spreading this information as well. And furthering the study, the first one was like Mondino de Luzzi at the University of Bologna did the first like live dissection that people could watch. And this again, these things are important because then you can study anatomy. It makes it okay to some extent, or at least you can justify it. Well, that other guy did it. Most of the anatomical drawings of this period of the Middle Ages are kind of simple,
Starting point is 00:14:29 almost like crude drawings. If you look at these and we should post some of these to our Facebook page so people can kind of see what I'm talking about. They largely exist to just show like a spatial relationship between really major organs and structures. So like here's a crude outline, like a 2D flat outline of a human body, and like something that represents a heart and something that represents a lung, and here's some intestine, that kind of thing. Very crude looking drawings for the most part. They're usually pretty humanoid, but sometimes the proportions of the human body are very odd
Starting point is 00:15:05 when they're rendered. I mean, and again, these are rendered from life, so it's not like you're guessing. The wound man, do you remember the wound man from the episode where we have the guy with all the, with all the like spears and knives and things sticking out of him? Remember that guy? That's the worst super here ever. That's kind of a good example of antitomical art from this time. Here's this guy who's just kind of standing there awkwardly and he's got a bunch of wounds
Starting point is 00:15:33 and implements hanging out of his body. This was an antitomical drawing, I guess. There were some really awkward, I found like some squatting figures that just had like a heart and some blood vessels that vaguely represented the tracks of where but nothing was definite. It wasn't like this blood vessel or that one. It was just like here's some random lines, some red lines and some blue lines. There you go. Geochomo Barongerio DeCarpi was a famous doctor and anatomist from the 1400s who actually
Starting point is 00:16:03 dissected and illustrated a text. He had made a name for himself, pretending to treat syphilis with mercury. He wasn't very successful, but he did make a lot of money and became kind of famous. So as was the fashion. And then he spent a lot of time on this text called Anatomyacarpi. And these drawings are still somewhat simple in a lot of cases, but there are some actual organs depicted. There's some actual close-up on like here is an actual organ and like I'm trying to draw the structure of it, not just some vague blob, like this is what it might look like. The human figures are really interesting and you'll
Starting point is 00:16:40 see this repeated for quite a while. And this is probably something people have looked at through art, like in, and if you've ever stumbled across these drawings and ever really considered, the figures are one, they're very idealized. They look like perfect, they're like godly specimens of humanity. And I don't just mean like from a physical ideal,
Starting point is 00:17:04 whatever you consider the physical quote unquote ideal to be, I mean like from a physical ideal, whatever you consider the physical, quote unquote ideal to be, I mean like they look saintly, they might have like beams of light radiating from their body. There are a lot of like naked men, like muscular men like posing with like beams of light around them and their hands are triumphantly outstretched
Starting point is 00:17:25 as they open up their skin to reveal their perfect, perfect pectorals and their perfect abdominal muscles. Underneath. Yeah. The volume eyes will have a little fun. And they look, and they're alive. Like the pictures of live people, like revealing their organs.
Starting point is 00:17:43 Like slim, good body. Yes, exactly. It's slim, good body. Yes, exactly. It's slim, good body now. But some of the skeletons, because there are skeleton drawings too, but they're like frozen and like dance-like poses that look, they look very nice. They're like, hello, I'm skeleton.
Starting point is 00:17:57 Look at this. Look at my bones. There are some people who are just standing there like carelessly like leaning on an axe and pointing with part of their, they're all naked, but then sometimes you're seeing underneath as well, like the musculature or whatever. There are a lot of female figures
Starting point is 00:18:15 that are depicted as draped dramatically over chairs. I almost imagine they're not on fainting couches, but that was like the thing that reminded me like they're like, they're like, they're like draped in the, and they, they always like, and this is in all the figures, like somewhere their skin is just kind of split open to reveal what's underneath, as if that has just naturally happened. Some of them are like dancing with scarves, and then their abdominal cavity happens to be open. I didn't realize this little good body
Starting point is 00:18:49 of touchstone that the people of today are familiar with because that might have seemed like a weird thing for me to say. A smooth good body. Was he like, is he still relevant? No, I don't think he's still relevant, but I think there are probably people are age who remember the character, Slim Good Body. Unless he's listening.
Starting point is 00:19:06 In which case, you are still relevant as your good body. And wow, can I say what an honor it is to, just look, SlimGoodBody.com, he's still doing it. He's still doing that thing. He's out there on his grind. Okay, sorry, getting it up again, for the millionth time. This is the same era as DaVinci, by the way. And I think you could see some of this echo
Starting point is 00:19:27 in his human figures, you know, the anatomical drawings that DaVinci did, which are these beautiful depictions of the human form, also trying to be exact and show what is what, right? Like what's underneath all the bumps? That's what artists want to know sometimes. What's underneath all those bumps so I can draw them better. But so that, but also they're very beautiful as well.
Starting point is 00:19:52 Versailles comes along at this point and this was for a long time. This was kind of like the basis of a lot of anatomical knowledge. It was 1543, Andreas Versailles publishes De Humany, Corporus, Fabrica, Libreceptum, which means on the fabric of the human body in seven books. So a lot of stuff about the human body. He did dissections, he employed a lot of different artists to render what he was seeing so that he could actually have somebody who was very talented,
Starting point is 00:20:20 draw the stuff, he did the dissection, and then people watched it and... And it's really smarter. Like, what the odds are going to be like a good dissecter and a good draw or two? It seems low. That's actually true. You'll find that. You'll find that a lot. The cover showed versalius. This is really cool. So one of versalius's goals was to contradict Galen. Like maybe even to go picture for picture to tell everybody like, look,
Starting point is 00:20:46 Galen was not right about everything and I'm gonna show you exactly why. So the cover of this tone is versalius, doing a dissection on a convicted criminal, who I think is still alive, like they've been sentenced to death. And there are all these people around him watching him. And there's like a skeleton hovering over, I guess, to creep everybody out or to like remind everyone of the specter
Starting point is 00:21:10 of death. And then there's Galen in one corner watching an Aristotle in the other corner watching him as he does this dissection. So, Versailles, I think maybe thought a lot of himself as well. So at this point, you have a lot of artistic advances. So like rendering and perspective, perspective is a big deal. If you think about it, the idea of perspective and art as that becomes a thing that really influenced the way that we could see a human body and understand proportions a lot better. And then you also start to see the use of woodcuts to reprint the images. So that made this book really special because you could, and can you imagine the detail that would take to do a woodcut of the
Starting point is 00:21:55 the vascular church or something, and then reprint that. That's amazing. Yeah, so you have these very beautiful detailed drawings and then on the woodcut and then reprinted. And he challenged a lot of Galen's false beliefs. They're still, by the way, 700 copies of this book. You can find. A grab one. There is one in Brown University's John Hay Library, which is bound in human skin.
Starting point is 00:22:19 Fun. I think we've talked about that before. We did, because they have some at the, the mutter. They have some human skinned books. Yep. So there is one of those. The anatomical art that followed of the 17 and 18th century was just, it kind of was expanding on this.
Starting point is 00:22:35 More life, like details, obviously perspective and everything. They also would add things like sometimes like a sheet draped over a body or like a fly on the body to make it really like, bam. Super spooky. Yeah. For look, this was really real. The provided for scale. You could also use copper plates to start, they started using some copper plates to like
Starting point is 00:22:56 reprint the images. You also saw like the rise of the anatomical museum at this point with like, you could walk into a spooky room with a bunch of shelves with organs and jars and things like that. Well, we don't come that far. Not that far. The ones of the early 1800s have sometimes done away
Starting point is 00:23:15 with like the backgrounds because like all these drawings that I'm talking about, you can look at them, they all have like rolling hills and trees and stuff behind these figures. So they start to do away with that because like why do you need that? Right. You don't need that. But they were still these idealized human figures.
Starting point is 00:23:33 They weren't really necessarily easy to follow. A lot of it was just blocks of text next to a picture. And they would describe everything next to the picture, but like labels weren't necessarily used. Oh, interesting. So obviously we've made a lot of progress, but we're not where we need to be yet. Right. How do we get there?
Starting point is 00:23:52 Well, I'm going to tell you that Justin, but first let's go to the Billing Department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that I've skilled at my car before the mouth. Now, said I think we're about to, uh, to finally go to a little progress here. Well, and to be fair, Justin, we had made progress. We definitely... If you look from, like, old texts where there are no pictures to, like, the realization, we need some pictures.
Starting point is 00:24:22 And here are some, like like crude human figures with some vague organs inside to like some beautiful but disturbing images of live humans dancing around with their organs popping out across the beautiful Greek countryside. And then finally we have like some actual anatomical drawings and figures. This brings us to Grey's Anatomy, not the TV show. No, the one with the A, Grey. What's the name? Got it.
Starting point is 00:24:57 Right. So we won't be talking much about the TV show. I would think. As much as, well, we've already talked about it plenty. A good amount. So I had always assumed that Grey's anatomy was completely made by whoever Grey was. Guys name right on there. Henry Grey, right? Yes, Henry Grey. I don't know why I knew that. That's weird. I didn't look at the nose. I know it seems
Starting point is 00:25:20 like I would have looked at the notes. I didn't. I've talked about it. I've listened. Oh, hmm. Wow. That's nice. Cool. Good husband. Henry Gray, Dr. Henry Gray, was a young and up-and-coming anatomist at St. George's. He was kind of well to do upper-class guy.
Starting point is 00:25:42 He had a lot of financial support. He had a lot of charisma. He was well liked. He was determined. He was out to make a name for himself and do whatever it took to be something memorable to leave a legacy, right? Right. And he dressed really well and people like them. And that's, it's important that you kind of get who this guy is. He had recently become a fellow of the Royal Society, which was a big deal. That was not necessarily something
Starting point is 00:26:15 that everybody could be. And he had presented papers and things in front of his fellow fellows. And. Yeah I love that. And was very well respected. And he did have a lot of skill as an anatomist. I don't mean to insinuate that he wasn't talented, but he was talented and he knew it.
Starting point is 00:26:36 How about that? I got wink. He had been lauded recently for an excellent treatise on the spleen. There was something called the Asley Cooper Prize, which was awarded every year to one of the, I don't even necessarily think it had to be a fellow, it was one of the doctors. And it, they would give you like a topic, like everybody has to do a treatise on this. And whoever does the best one gets this prize and it was like 300 pounds or something.
Starting point is 00:27:05 And so they were all challenged to do something on the spleen and he wrote a very good treatise on the spleen and his text was very good, but he needed help with the drawings. That wasn't necessarily his skill set, he could do them, but he wanted somebody who was really good and he had heard of a younger he wanted somebody who was really good, and he had heard of a younger anatomist who was still in training, who was making some
Starting point is 00:27:30 money on the side, doing some drawings, doing some illustrations for various other doctors and professors, and he reached out to him. And his name was Dr. Henry Van Dyke Carter, also Henry. Okay. He's easier to remember. Yeah. So he talked to Dr. Carter and he said, you know, I would really like you to do the illustrations for this thing I'm doing on the spleen. And if you look back through the cool thing is Dr. Carter kept a huge diary through most of his life about all of his daily ins and outs, everything that happened
Starting point is 00:28:01 to him. So you can really, you get to know this guy a lot easier. I've been reading a book about it, the anatomist. And you, you really get to a feel for who he was a lot easier. He was very self-conscious, he was very insecure. His family wasn't exactly thrilled with what he was doing with his life. They didn't necessarily think he was going to be successful. And he, he had a lot of, he was tortured by, he had a very strong religious upbringing and a very strong faith. And he was constantly doubting whether or not
Starting point is 00:28:33 he was kind of fulfilling his duties on earth, kind of being the best Henry he could be. So this guy who's like riddled with self-esteem issues who's desperate to succeed, he totally idolizes Henry Gray. He thinks he's just amazing. And he wants to be just like him because he buys into everything that Henry Gray appears to be.
Starting point is 00:28:55 So when he asks him, will you do some illustrations for my spleen treatise? He's like, yes. Yes. For sure. I love the jaw spleen. So he does it. Probably. It's like kind of round. It sure. I love the jaw spleen. So he does it. They probably is like kind of round looks like a bean fight again. Yeah, but I bet his drawings were probably better
Starting point is 00:29:10 than that. I know. I'm just kind of guessing what a spleen pie looks like. I like that. You just think most organs are kind of round and look like a bean. Basically yes. So they the kidneys look way more like beans, but anyway. Well, there is a bean named after him since I didn't assume. I mean, the whole bean after him. The kidney looks like a bean. You're trying to drop a dollar to me. It must be so honored that they have a whole bean named after him. Whole bean?
Starting point is 00:29:37 Wow. What? Oh, we do. We're really honored. The name Kidney Now. Oh, we do. It's filter all the toxins from your blood and keep you alive, but I'm glad we got a bean. I'm gonna show my parents the liver that I really made it.
Starting point is 00:29:50 The Kidney's dad is the liver. Oh, there's no liver bean. No, the liver is the, is the kidney's dad. Oh, okay, no, that's not liver. Okay, where's the kidneys? It is, look it up in your book. Anyway, they nabbed the Asley Cooper prize that year. And this was a huge deal.
Starting point is 00:30:07 This was a big, this was a big, like, boom to his career reputation. Like one of the top spleen drawing prizes of public honor. So with his money and his potential and his spleen paper, he decided that he should create an anatomy text that was more accessible to students.
Starting point is 00:30:28 He wanted some book that he could write based on his ability as an anatomist and that all students would be able to afford. He wanted it to be affordable and accessible and kind of the new Bible of human anatomy. So he persuaded Dr. Carter to help him out. And this was hard to do because Gray still has not paid Carter for all the illustrations he did for his spleen paper. And so Carter at first is like, I don't know, you can't owe me money and you promised me some stuff and you didn't really
Starting point is 00:31:01 follow through. And this is going to be a lot of work. And he's still working on his career. He's still trying to get all of his licensing and become a physician and work on his own. And he's doing all these drawings because everyone has noticed like, wow, he's really good at this. We gotta keep paying this, gotta do this. But he's trying to pursue his own thing.
Starting point is 00:31:19 So it takes him a little while, but he finally persuades him one because I think Carter, as we know, really like admired Gray. And then the other reason is Gray finally promises, like, look, I'll give you 10 pounds a month if you'll do this. She probably underpayment by today's standards,
Starting point is 00:31:35 like if you look at what he created. And he's not probably not cutting men on royalties, I assume. No, no, but he did need money to survive and so he was willing to take it. So 10 pounds a month, he took to start drawing the illustrations for this book and gray worked on the text Carter's illustrations of course if you look at Gray's anatomy and you can find images from this everywhere You can buy the book I own a copy. Most it's pretty heavy. Yes. It's huge. Most in medicine probably own a copy now I don't know how
Starting point is 00:32:09 Practical it is nowadays. I don't because it's huge You about to learn in med school like I seem like you had to have it. Well, you don't I didn't necessarily need it for med school But it's just a it feels like the thing you're supposed to have. Yeah, right. I got it but he His illustrations are beautiful. They have the shadowing and just the detail. And I mean, they're really elegant, beautiful, exact drawings that were probably unmatched at that point. But the other thing that he did was that he labeled the structures, like sometimes the words even like wind
Starting point is 00:32:42 around with the structure they're following in curve. And this was hugely helpful as a student of anatomy, I can tell you, to have the names on the pictures as opposed to trying to read a big block of text and then find what structure they're referencing. Like this goes in period of this and goes lateral to this and just put the name on it. Grace text was also really great though.
Starting point is 00:33:03 Like it was really easy to follow and very descriptive and made a lot of sense and just like, it was a very logical progression of thought. So I don't wanna undermine Gray. He did a lot of hard work on this and his skill was definitely felt, but Carter's illustrations are equally important, I think, to the understanding of anatomy.
Starting point is 00:33:21 Now at one point during this process, Gray got asked by like a rich guy to come hang out on his yacht for six months and be his personal doctor and Gray took off for a while while Carter stayed at home, working hard on his illustrations and then also trying to pursue his career. But eventually they finished it and they published it. There was a lot of quibbling over the cover page
Starting point is 00:33:43 like the title page, because they had the name of the book, which Gray had already decided what Gray's an ad me. And they had Henry Gray. And then they have, and you can find this page. You can look up this original page if you want to see the proof, because it's been uncovered. And like you can see where Henry Gray went, where Henry Van Dyck Carter's name was listed, and drew through it, and said that he wanted the text to be smaller, and also eliminated one of his titles, so he wouldn't sound as impressive. Oh man.
Starting point is 00:34:18 Yeah, so he went and like tried to physically minimize the contributions of Carter. Like you can find this where he has struck through and it's very clear. Like, I don't, this is my book. I know he did some pictures, but this is my book. That's how I stop. Carter went on to do other things with his life. He, after he finished all of his training and he had achieved all of his,
Starting point is 00:34:40 of his titles and his credentials and licensing and everything, he actually went to India and he worked on leprosy for a long time wrote some really groundbreaking papers describing leprosy and and have the what caused it in the process of it and all that kind of stuff. So he did a lot of stuff with his life after that. Gray ended up essentially taking on a credit. and it up essentially taking on a credit. I mean, to this day, if you would ask me who did Grey's Anatomy, I would have thought it was like a joke. Like, well, I mean, Grey.
Starting point is 00:35:11 I've never heard of Henry Van Dyk Carter until I started researching this. And then his name kind of rung about with the leprosy stuff, but I certainly didn't know that he was the one who drew all the pictures and grades in Adam. Because Henry Gray kind of took all the credit. It got bigger over time because it was supposed to be like the end all be all of human anatomy
Starting point is 00:35:34 was this book. So at one point it was over 2000 pages at its largest because the more we learn, the more we added to it, right? Each addition got bigger and bigger and bigger. It has been kind of cold to make it a little more acceptable, but I think it's still like 1500 pages. A little lighter. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:35:50 So it's still pretty dense. The quality of the art is still amazing. It's still unmatched for its time. Most students nowadays probably use Dr. Frank Netters, Atlas of Human Anatomy. I know that was the thing for me in medical school. Everybody had their netter. And the netter Atlas is it's really easy to use. It's smaller, of course, it's not, it's not a giant. I mean, maybe I'll tablet now. Well, I'm sure, I'm sure you can
Starting point is 00:36:17 do that, but I used to book. I'm sure you can do that, but I mean, I went to, you know, it's been a while back in the old days. Anyway, I used to book you know, it's been a while. Back in the old days. Anyway, I used to book. It was published in 1989. He called it his personal sistine chapel. It's kind of a cool guy. Dr. Frank Netter. He, my personal sistine chapel, he said something with podcasts, right?
Starting point is 00:36:37 Yeah, probably, hopefully. Yeah. Maybe it's this episode. I don't know. He just a little plug for Dr. Frank Netter. Not only did he make this Atlas of Anatomy, which like all med students know the name Netter because they have probably have a Netter. He also like spent some of his time devoted to like fighting fake medicine.
Starting point is 00:36:57 Netter! Cool, dude. Anyway, that book was a little easier to follow and there's color illustrations which I think helped a little bit I Thought I would throw in one final thing as I'm thinking about like the progression of anatomical drawings because now you can find a ton of different Alluses which are very detailed exact drawings and different parts of the human body and some that just focus on the brain or whatever You can also if you take Obviously if you go to medical school,
Starting point is 00:37:25 if you are a medical, if someone in the medical profession, you'll probably do dissecting, which makes it easier to understand, and you can also find pro sections, which are actually like pre-dicecated parts that you can look at. I did some, I actually made some pro sections
Starting point is 00:37:42 when I was in medical school. But I thought I would tack onto to that the body world's exhibit. Oh, yeah, I guess for sure it's like the 3D version of what we're talking about. That's right. So Gunther Van Higgins produced the body world's exhibit, which he used a process called plastination, which he actually invented the process to preserve bodies in various forms, like segmented in various ways. So like dissected to various levels and slices and you can make very thin sections that way
Starting point is 00:38:19 and display them. Just remembering when we went to see this exhibit in New York with Riley, Riley was with us and she was like, probably would have been six or seven at the time. And we kept, we kept trying to reassure that was all fake. And then we would say something that would hint to her that like, well, maybe it is in fact real. And then we have to double back like, no, no, no, totally fake. And we kept her in suspense for literal years.
Starting point is 00:38:50 Yeah. It was years that she, and like, and finally she looked at us and went, it was real, right? It was real. Like, you were lying to me. So I wouldn't be freaked out. But it was real. This is three weeks ago. She said.
Starting point is 00:39:01 Um, do you know though that before he made his, his body world's exhibit, which has some notoriety because there's been some questions about how some of the bodies were obtained, he swears that he got permission for all of them and that he knows where they all came from and that they were all donated. But there are other, there are other similar exhibits that have been called into question. So anyway, there's obviously some controversy there. But before he did that, he performed the first public autopsy in 170 years in London in 2002 to an audience of 500 people.
Starting point is 00:39:39 And it was then later that year shown on channel four. Whoa, creepy. No idea. There was a, there was a dis four. Whoa, creepy. No idea. There was a, there was a dissection and autopsy was shown on TV. I imagine missed it, is that where we're at? No, I'm not mad, I missed it. I mean, I've done it, so I don't need to watch it on TV.
Starting point is 00:39:55 I'm just, I can't, I can't believe that it was on TV, can you imagine that? In England though, they put whatever on England. But whatever. Which one is channel four? That's, that must be like the serious one, right? Not BBC one. Not BBC two.
Starting point is 00:40:11 It's not BBC three. That's going to do for us folks. Thank you so much for joining us. If you want to say some more great illustrations of bodies, you should preorder the solbona's book. That's right. It's got a Y Ford slash the solbona's book, Taylor Smirl, Sidious, Journey Gifted Illustrator, has drawn plenty of bodies for you to feast your eyes on in there.
Starting point is 00:40:34 And that sounded weird. I don't mean there. I mean, it's for the sound as weird as it did. But a bit.ly4 slash the solbona's book, we're just a few weeks away. And those pre-orders really do help because they all get folded into the first week sales and the first week sales of a book are really, really important. So if you want to support us, please share that link around and pick up a copy to call your local bookstore, period on Amazon, whatever. Just, uh, please thank you. If you're
Starting point is 00:41:05 a fan of our show, I think you're really going to love this book. We're really proud of it. Um, thanks to taxpayers for the use of their song medicines as the intro and outro of our program. Uh, and thanks to Max Fun Network for having us as part of their extended podcasting family. And thank you to you, most of all, for listening and continuing to support us. But until next week my name is Justin McRoy and as always don't drill a hole in your head Alright! Maximumfund.org Comedy and Culture, Artistone, Listener Supported. Hi, I'm Vince and I'm Teresa and we host One Bed Mother, a comedy podcast about parenting.
Starting point is 00:42:00 Whether you are a parent or just no kids exists in the world, join us each week as we honestly share what it's like to be a parent. And then that's how my day starts. Yeah. Come on! I feel sick of it! When is that going to be over? Like I wanted to stop! What's the reason you're hurting my ears? I mean, that's it!
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Starting point is 00:42:35 Thanks.

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