Side Note

Medicine used to be so goth

These images in the archives of the National Library of Medicine, from a range of antique medical publications, are cool as hell in a spooky kind of way. It’s a little bit incredible that before we had a really solid understanding of science, health, and the human body, medicine was a mystical field and diseases were basically terrifying monsters out to fuck us up. For many people, including me, it still can seem like that sometimes, but at least doctors no longer believe that stuff like gout is caused by demons or that the only way people can understand how eyes work is by rendering them as giant spotlights.

“Origin of the Gout”

“Origin of the Gout”

“Hairy-Faced Man”

“Hairy-Faced Man”

“Eyes and Optical Nerves in a Landscape”

“Eyes and Optical Nerves in a Landscape”