get weird

iamjapanese:

John Hamilton Mortimer (British, 1740–1779)

Beaching a Fishing Boat in a Gale   1783

Etching and aquatint, printed with brown ink   Etched and published by Robert Blyth

Beaching a Fishing Boat in a Gale   1760-1779

Pen and black ink

Charlie Parr - Samson and Delilah

biomedicalephemera:

Amputation of foot and leg with prostheses examples

Given that we largely only need our legs for balance and ambulation, and that we’re (usually) perfectly capable of balancing with one leg, making functional prostheses for the lower extremities was much simpler than making functional arms and hands. Heck, even a peg leg could work fine in most situations, at least if it was fitted well.

Most prostheses in the early-to-mid 19th century were focused more on aesthetics than on true usability. They looked like the real thing, and could easily be masked by pants and shoes, but they were often clunky, heavy, and ill-fitted (causing sores at the articulation point). Some doctors were trying to work on functional knees for prosthetic legs by that point, but those were even worse to use, as the “joint” was difficult to control.

Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme comprenant la medecine operatoire, par le docteur Marc Jean Bourgery. Nicolas Henri Jacob (artist), 1831.

(via biomedicalephemera)

biomedicalephemera:

Male Birds-of-Paradise, in repose (top) and on display (bottom)

Left to right: “Le Sifilet” [the Western or Arfak Parotia] - Parotia sefilata, Superb Bird-of-Paradise - Lophorina superba , “Le Nébuleux” [The Nebulous Bird-of-Paradise] - ??

Despite their incredibly different outward appearances, the Birds-of-Paradise are all very closely related. We know this because of their skeletal similarities, and, these days, their genetic similarities.

However, their close affiliation to one another genetically has also caused problems in pinning down the exact number of species in the family Paradisaeidae, as it turns out that within each of the fourteen genus, the species are able to (and occasionally naturally do) cross-breed with one another. This wild cross-breeding is believed to be the source of many of the specimens and illustrated birds that have never again, or very rarely, been seen in the wild.

An example of this cross-breeding is shown above, at right. The “Nebulous Bird-of-Paradise” is thought to either be a misrepresented Twelve-Wired Bird-of-Paradise (unlikely, given Jacques Barraband’s reputation as an ornithological illustrator), or a cross between two species living in nearby ranges of New Guinea. As the ranges of many different species and genus overlapped at the time of the specimens being gathered, it’s unknown which two would have created such a bird, or whether it would have been fertile (most wild cross-breeds of birds-of-paradise are). Genetic tests may give us the answers to these questions in the future.

Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de paradis et rolliers. Francois Levaillant, illustrated by Jacques Barraband, 1806.