The Eyes Have It

WebMD videocast. “There’s a place I want to drop my bombs, and a place where I don’t want to drop my bombs.”

The Body Worlds exhibition may or may not have educational value, artistic merit or a completely sound ethical foundation. As a subject of discussion, however, it definitely does have a way bringing out impassioned points of view (the Thanksgiving dinner table might not have been the best time to have introduced it as a topic of discussion). The College of Physicians of Philadelphia will be joining as well as contributing to the conversation with a town hall discussion. Their Bodies: Ourselves takes place Thursday, December 1, 2005 starting at 6:00 p.m.

CNN.com article:

“Osman Ratib, professor and chief of nuclear medicine at the University Hospital of Geneva, has co-created a computer software program called Osirix. It enables medical professionals to view medical images on their iPods, saving them and the hospitals they work for thousands of dollars in expensive equipment.

“Medical imaging these days is much more than just looking at slices through the body — it’s about looking at the body in motion, in function. We’re dealing with images that are more than just 2D, black and white images.

“It’s not rocket science but it’s taking something that’s been designed for the consumer market and using it for something that’s medically driven.”

The FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) website offers this collection of marketing ephemeria related to the patent medicine industry at the end of the 19th century. These are the kinds of products that gave us the phrase “snake oil salesmen”. It’s a little sad to see that many of our culture’s obsessions (and the rhetoric used by the unscrupulous to cater to them) have changed so little over the hundred years. [via medpundit]

Maintained by the Society for Developmental Biology, the Developmental Biology Cinema “…grew out of a breakfast meeting at the 13th International Congress of Developmental Biology held in Snowbird, Utah, July, 1997. The aim of this project is to get video sequences of developing embryos (organisms), and experimental techniques, from the developmental biologist’s lab to the eyeballs of interested individuals in a user-friendly and inexpensive form.”

DNA strands (1/2/3), most of which seem to be correctly rendered as right handed, and unseen anatomy seem to be recurrent themes at this tattoo gallery site. Interesting use of the skin as a canvas on which to illustrate what it’s covering. May not be safe for work.

A collection of collages that appear to made of cut up anatomy textbooks. His choice of source material seems pretty ironic given the fact that anatomical illustration is all about putting the pieces exactly where they need to be in relation to the other pieces. Although visually interesting, decontextualized anatomy is basically information free. It’s also interesting to think about what he had to do to the original prints as being akin to surgery or autopsy. Sommer’s obituary. [via Consumptive]

This site asks “Was God superimposed on a mid-sagittal outline of the human brain in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel painting of ‘The Creation of Adam’?” But it doesn’t even attempt to answer the really interesting questions: why did Michelangelo do it and what was he trying to say? [via Incoming Signals]

Good example of a well-executed Flash application found on the site supporting the PBS series The Secret Life of the Brain. Might be considered somewhat simplistic, but its level of complexity is probably appropriate for its intended audience/purpose. My only problem with the interface is that you can’t reach the limbic system by clicking on the brain, you can only reach it by using the buttons in the lower right. If you don’t explore those controls, you’ll only get part of the experience.

Skulls in Culture, part of a California Academy of Sciences exhibit, examines the power of the skull as image/symbol - a power that doesn’t seem to be held by any other bone in the skeletal system.

“Skulls do more than just protect the brain — they also stimulate the mind. Often symbols of mortality and power, they have been employed in human ceremony, ritual, and art for tens of thousands of years. From the ancient animal skulls in Paleolithic burial sites to the curlicued cattle skulls that float like spirits over Georgia O’Keefe’s canvas mountains, cultures around the world have turned to skulls to express ideas about both life and death.“

Although this article from the October issue of Popular Science inspired laugh or two (as well as a renewed affection for my own job), it’s the icons, created by Josh McKibillo, depicting the various downsides to each job, that were really funny.

Archive of an exhibit that took place at Homerton Hospital in 2001.

“… looks at how artists in many different cultures and times have portrayed our health and the people who keep us in good health – the healing professions.

Drawing on the wide range of books from around the world in the British Library, the exhibition includes both serious and humorous pictures of diagnosis and treatment, prevention and cure, and doctors and nurses themselves.“

Dr. Fungus promises to be “your on-line reference to all things mycological!”

“The Image Bank contains hundreds of images of fungi that range from images of microscopic fungi in tissue to macroscopic images of people, animals, and plants that have fungal infections. Many of the images are also available as pre-packaged PowerPoint slides.“

The image bank seems fairly extensive and each image is annotated. The PowerPoint slides are more than just an image slapped into a blank presentation. Each slide conveniently contains the same annotations that are in the image bank and is pre-formatted. The formatting is simple and unobtrusive and should be pretty easy to tweak if you would like it to more closely resemble the rest of your presentation. The only thing I didn’t like is that each slide seems to have the The Dr. Fungus URL in large purple letters running up the left side. This can easily be deleted.

From the HeSCA Listserve:

“Do you know of any remarkable health education materials that make a significant impact on the way health-related information is communicated?

The Vesalius Trust for Visual Communication in the Health Sciences is accepting applications for the 2004 Frank Netter Award for Special Contributions to Medical Education. This award is given annually to an individual, institution or company in recognition of the development of visually oriented educational materials that have made a significant contribution to the advancement of education and research in visual communication for the health sciences. There is no application fee. The award includes a plaque, monetary award of $1,000 and travel expenses to receive the award at the annual meeting of the Association of Medical Illustrators. Past winners have made innovative contributions in healthcare education including anatomical models, books, simulators, videotapes, and interactive learning materials.

Anyone interested in applying for this prestigious award can get an application and additional information on the Vesalius Trust Web site.

Application deadline for the 2004 award is December 12, 2003.“

Thanks to Karen Adsit, Walker Teaching Resource Center, Univ. of Tenn. at Chattanooga

This issue gets raised whenever we’re preparing a poster for a researcher who is presenting at a conference just about anywhere outside North America: Why do domestic conferences usually specify a horizontal aspect ratio for scientific posters when conferences elsewhere (especially in Europe) usually require posters to be vertical?

This came up again recently and the discussion ended with the usual unsatisfactory conclusions (tradition and the American preference for more personal space). I’ve tried finding an answer online and although there are many, many sites devoted to creating good posters, none of them dealt with this question.

Personally, I prefer working with the horizontal format because it seems to lend itself to creating a good poster; the flow of the content is just more fluid and there are more options available for making it all fit together.

If you have any insight into this apparent cultural divide in the conference world, I’d appreciate it if you would drop me a line or share it in a comment attached to this entry. Thanks.

The Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department’s October Book of the Month was Pathological Anatomy: Illustrations of the Elementary Forms of Disease by Robert Carswell.

“This beautifully illustrated folio volume consists of forty four coloured lithograph plates with accompanying descriptions of various pathological conditions. The text and the drawings were undertaken by Sir Robert Carswell, who was both a distinguished practitioner of pathology and a skilled artist. Perhaps overshadowed by more well known anatomical atlases, this is a monumental work that deserves further study.“

Carswell’s motivation for creating this landmark work echoes a one of the central theme’s of TEHI: the importance of being visual. He “undertook its publication because of ‘the great difficulty, and frequently the impossibility, of comprehending even the best descriptions of the physical or anatomical characters of diseases, without the aid of coloured delineations.’“