Anatomage Tables at MLA

Kellee Selden returned from the 2024 MLA Conference in Portand earlier in May to say that one of the most interesting things she saw there were these digital anatomy dissection tables by Anatomage in the vendor hall.

Derived from actual human cadavers, these tables are used by students to learn anatomy.  These have been very popular with nursing students who would not actually get to take an official cadaver dissection class as medical students do.  

You can click through layers of tissue from skin to bone or turn 3D images in any direction to get a better look.  It's pretty amazing!  Watch the video above ...

The tables are expensive at $80,000 for a large table, or $60K for the smaller ones.   Donors often put up the cash for a learning environment.

NLM's Dream Anatomy Exhibition

The National Library of Medicine recently launched their Dream Anatomy Exhibit.

The interior of our bodies is hidden to us.  What happens beneath the skin is mysterious, fearful, amazing.  In antiquity, the body's internal structure was the subject of speculation, fantasy and some study, but there were few efforts to represent it in pictures.  The invention of the printing press in the 15th century ad the cascade of print technologies that followed helped to inspire a new spectacular science of anatomy, and new spectacular visions of the body. Anatomical imagery proliferated, detailed and informative but also whimsical, surreal, beautiful, and grotesque -- a dream anatomy that reveals as much about the outer world as it does the inner self.