Attached Link: http://books.google.com/books?id=Lf1aAAAAQAAJ

It's very cool that we now have access to centuries old books that, even if they were available at a local library, the average person wouldn't have access to such rare manuscripts. I've had fun finding old historical books and reading the perspectives of the time rather than the interpretations by authors centuries later. Use the advanced search and click the Full Books radials to get search results for entire books that can be downloaded (most old enough that the copyright has long expired). Limiting published dates allows searching specific historical periods.  They've got books going back a thousand years (in Arabic), but English reading audiences are limited to books only about 300-400 years in age.

I don't have any immediate need for 200 year old surgical props, but I'm sure glad I didn't live back then.

That bone saw is about a 10 on the wince meter.  And remember, this was from an age before anesthetics.  Ouch.

Oooh, shiny!

Okay, I've got to model some of those.

Thanks for the info.

Oh my...VERY interesting! Another thanks for the info, too.

I don't think I want to know what Fig. 4 was meant to do. :P

the mark of a good surgeon then was how fast they could lop off a limb. Amputation was advanced technology back then (around the early 1800s). Four people would hold the guy down...and...you get the idea (see 'Gone with the wind' and the 'no cut' scene). It was the 19th century that got surgeons into surgery, and out of carpentry.

They shouldn't be too hard to model...

Klebnor

By searching for books with "illustrated" in the title before 1800, using the advanced search, I'm finding dozens of books with copper plates, ranging from travelogues through familiar and unfamiliar places to scientific treatises of the times. I even found a early edition of the first volume of Encyclopedia Britannica when it was only a three books instead of dozens of volumes. Even then, it still contained 160 copperplate illustrations.

I've always liked the look of the old copperplate drawings.

Anyone in the mood for a Frankenstein scene?

I think Frankenstein was written around 1811 or so (I could definitely be wrong...;) probably later, but I didn't pay as much attention in school as I should.

I know there was a sort of spoon that was used to remove arrows (bet that smarts...;)

Some of the stranger things were heated glass cups that would be put on the back to draw out disease, etc.

Quote - I think Frankenstein was written around 1811 or so (I could definitely be wrong...;) probably later, but I didn't pay as much attention in school as I should.

The good ol' Wikipedia says it was published anonymously in 1818, then the second edition in 1831 had Mary Shelley's name on it.

Quote - Some of the stranger things were heated glass cups that would be put on the back to draw out disease, etc.

 
Actually, I think there's a boutique in Los Angeles where you can get that done today, for about $250 a pop...

:lol: