Finding anatomy poster source image?

February 22, 2008 9:50 PM

How can I find the original source image from an anatomy poster?

I'm looking for the original source image that this poster is taken from.

It looks like it's from an old anatomy textbook and is probably something now in the public domain.

I've found similar old anatomy color plates on Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg but can't find this particular work. I've also tried Googling some of the phrases from the inscription, but no luck.

Any suggestions?

posted by andreux to media & arts (4 comments total)

try:

"Dictionary of Arts and Sciences", London 1763-64.

Illustration engraved by T. Jefferys, Geographer to His Magesty.
posted by parmanparman at 12:31 AM on February 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

For some reason that allposters.com site won't display the full size version of the image in my browser. However it could easily be from an old edition of Gray's Anatomy.

Bartleby.com has the 1918 edition for comparison.
posted by roofus at 10:21 AM on February 23, 2008

I have the 1977 Collector's Edition Gray's Anatomy and although the illustrations are similar, it's not the same. I don't know how often the illustrations in Gray's are updated, but the way features are labelled is different. The type and the style of illustration is similar, though. Maybe something from roughly the same era (mid-20th C to the '70s?).
posted by tracicle at 11:44 AM on February 23, 2008

"Maybe something from roughly the same era (mid-20th C to the '70s?)."

It's nineteenth-century typography. The 1977 Collector's Edition is a reprint of the 1901 American edition. However, a history of Gray's Anatomy (pdf) indicates that new illustrations in the older style were made for early twentieth-century editions:

The period 1880–1930 was a difficult time for anatomical illustration, because the new techniques of photolitho and half-tone were not as yet perfected, and in any case could not provide the bold simplicity of line required for a book like Gray's which depended so heavily on clear illustration. Recognising the inferiority of half tone illustrations to Carter’s wood engraved originals, Pick and Howden courageously decided to jettison them altogether. Most of the book’s new illustrations and even some older ones, were newly commissioned wood engravings or line drawings, intended ‘to harmonise with Carter’s original figures’, and they did successfully emulate Carter’s verve.

I remember seeing an archive of old medical texts scans, but I can't find it again.
posted by D.C. at 8:06 PM on February 23, 2008