Johns Hopkins University Press
  • The “Ice Age” of Anatomy and Obstetrics:Hand and Eye in the Promotion of Frozen Sections around 1900
Figure 1. Wilhelm Braune, The Position of the Uterus and Foetus at the End of Pregnancy. Illustrated by Sections through Frozen Bodies (Leipzig, 1872). Having sawn the frozen cadaver in two along its middle line, Braune chiseled away the in-utero fetus from the left half to leave the uterine cavity empty. He reunited the fetal parts on the right half of the cadaver to create a trompe l’oeil effect in the final plate. While the sectioned maternal tissue is represented in two dimensions, the lifelike fetus appears in three. These color lithographs (58 x 39 cm) by artist C. Schmiedel appeared in a supplement to Braune’s folio atlas, published simultaneously in English and German. <br/><br/>Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.
Figure 1.

Wilhelm Braune, The Position of the Uterus and Foetus at the End of Pregnancy. Illustrated by Sections through Frozen Bodies (Leipzig, 1872). Having sawn the frozen cadaver in two along its middle line, Braune chiseled away the in-utero fetus from the left half to leave the uterine cavity empty. He reunited the fetal parts on the right half of the cadaver to create a trompe l’oeil effect in the final plate. While the sectioned maternal tissue is represented in two dimensions, the lifelike fetus appears in three. These color lithographs (58 x 39 cm) by artist C. Schmiedel appeared in a supplement to Braune’s folio atlas, published simultaneously in English and German.

Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.

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