The Spectacle of Illusion

The Sick Rose is a beautifully gruesome and strangely fascinating visual tour through disease in an age before colour photography. This stunning volume, combining detailed illustrations of afflicted patients from some of…..

Crucial Interventions is a startling look at the golden age of surgery through gruesome yet beautiful technical illustrations and paintings from the Wellcome Collection, written by the bestselling author of The Sick Rose . Chaptered from head to toe, this compelling volume interweaves graphic illustrations of surgical techniques and instruments from rare, nineteenth-century textbooks with engrossing and enlightening […]

Beneath the original Venetian glass and rosewood case at La Specola in Florence lies Clemente Susini’s Anatomical Venus (c. 1790), a perfect object whose luxuriously bizarre existence challenges belief. It – or, better, she – was conceived of as a means to teach human anatomy without need for constant dissection, which was messy, ethically fraught […]