The Wisdom of Repugnance

Sometimes known as the "Yuck Factor":

... describes the belief that an intuitive (or "deep-seated") negative response to some thing, idea or practice should be interpreted as evidence for the intrinsically harmful or evil character of that thing. Furthermore, it refers to the notion that wisdom may manifest itself in feelings of disgust towards anything which lacks goodness or wisdom, though the feelings or the reasoning of such 'wisdom' may not be immediately explicable through reason.

(Thank you, Wiki)

And:

The term remains largely confined to discussions of bioethics, and is somewhat related to the term "yuck factor". However, unlike the latter, it is used almost exclusively by those who accept its underlying premise; i.e., that repugnance does, in fact, indicate wisdom. It is thus often viewed as loaded language, and is primarily used by certain bioconservatives to justify their position.

The wisdom of repugnance is often used to justify so-called "knee-jerk" negative reactions to cloning (particularly of humans), genetic engineering, and other contentious subjects. One who adheres to this thesis may consider it unnecessary ("in crucial cases") to examine an issue logically, or to debate dissenting arguments.

The term has since migrated to other controversies, such as same-sex marriage, abortion, pornography, and alternative sexualities. In all cases, it expresses the view that one's "gut reaction" might justify objecting to some practice even in the absence of a persuasive rational case against that practice.

So. Wanna see something? This is footage of a still from Patricia Piccinini's "We Are Family" installation.

Sturm und Drang

What?

"... the name of a movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s through the early 1780s, in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment and associated aesthetic movements. The conventional translation of the term is Storm and Stress; a more literal translation of Drang might be "urge", "longing", or "impulse")."

"The protagonist in a typical Sturm und Drang stage work, poem, or novel is driven to action - often violent action - not by pursuit of noble means nor by true motives, but by revenge and greed. Goethe's unfinished Prometheus exemplifies this along with the common ambiguity provided by juxtaposing humanistic platitudes with outbursts of irrationality.[6] The literature of Sturm und Drang features an anti-aristocratic slant while seeking to elevate all things humble, natural, or intensely real (especially whatever is painful, tormenting, or frightening)."

Hello, my name is (_____) and I am a wikipediaholic.

It Ain't My Fault

Via Defend New Orleans: Mos Def & Lenny Kravitz, Preservation Hall Band, Trombone Shorty and Tim Robbins update the New Orleans classic ‘It Ain’t My Fault’ to benefit Gulf Aid in response to the BP oil spill.

A Little Death

Sam Taylor-Wood, "A Little Death" (2002)

"Taylor-Wood updates traditional still life imagery. What seems at first to be a quiet arrangement of a dead hare and peach on a table starts to decompose before our eyes. Rather than attempting to capture a moment in time, the viewer is put face to face with a speeded up decomposition of the subject matter. Taylor-Wood brings home the transience of biological life, and the viewer's mortality. This work explores the issue of temporality, an idea which permeates the artist's oeuvre, where a course of action can change radically even within the space of a few seconds." (Blurble source)

Robert Todd Lincoln

File this under "fun morbid factoids to share at the dinner table".
Found via Freaky Secrets of the Presidency:

Robert Todd Lincoln, son of Abe Lincoln, was present at the assassinations of three Presidents: his father's, President Garfield's and President McKinley's. After the last shooting, he refused to attend any State affairs. He would not have been present at these events if it hadn't been for the brother of John Wilkes Booth, who saved his life years earlier.

Photo via the wiki article. There are other pictures out there but I really like this one, shown at age 22. This fella is the stuff superstitions are made of.

About Face

Sage Sohier, middle image from triptych ‘Woman having facial prosthesis re-fitted, Boston, 1996’, from her series on reconstructive surgeries ‘About Face’

Beauty is the Promise of Happiness

Shrunken Apple Heads

Martha Stewart kinda freaks me out but I do love her Halloween stuff!

Click HERE for instructions and video on how to make shrunken apple heads.

Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook

Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook, Text by Katherine Dunn, Edited by Sean Tejaratchi

The thing I like most about this book is that the scrapbook sense remains intact. The somewhat haphazard, mishmashed, jumbled "organization". The lack of chronological order, the careful block-lettered handwritten captions courtesy the creator. The spell woven, the queer suspicion that if I put the pages up to my face I could smell the musty past, conjure up a time long since dead. Therein lies the charm.

The photos are all black & white and despite some retouching/clean-up there are a lot that are kind of difficult to see/decipher. But there are also plenty that leap off the page and shout in your face. Babies and children warning. Some are not just dead. They are destroyed.

The intro by Katherine Dunn is a perfect accompaniment. All quotes below are excerpts. Clicking pictures will make them REALLY BIG and easier to see. You're welcome.

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Violent death makes visible that which was never meant to be seen -- the glistening innards, the secret apparatus beneath the skin. These unfamiliar sights are not easily comprehended. Workers new to the job, rookie cops and ambulance drivers, struggle with the mess. Their eyes reel at ripped distortions that blur a formerly human identity.



Experienced death workers throw a professional switch in their brains and see the face more clearly. Their eyes methodically link dismembered limbs, realign a rictus grin, and separate identity from wreckage. Coolly. As connoisseurs. For the investigators a dead body is not so much victim as evidence, the ultimate clue to the workings of the perpetrator.



Our inquiries to the LAPD produced a blunt refusal from the head of the Personnel Division. The staff was far too busy to bother with archaeological excavations for mere historical purposes. All we know of Jack Huddleston is the internal evidence of his scrapbook, which suggests, among other things, that he spent years as a detective on the homicide detail for LAPD, and that he blamed us, the oblivious citizenry, for the contents of his collection.



What the do-gooders label "de-sensitization" has a value as well as a price. Some of us can't afford to be shocked by catastrophe. The surgeon, the burn ward nurse, emergency room attendants, paramedics, firefighters and cops, all those who scrape the still-screaming remains out of car wrecks, must cultivate their off-switch. Those who can't learn to crack wise and discuss baseball over a corpse must find a gentler line of work. The rumor is that city cops get strange from what they see, their eyes flattening or sinking into sockets as deep and hollow as rat holes.



The original scrapbook is large, six inches thick. Its stiff cardboard covers have disappeared over time and what is left are hundreds of black and white photos glued onto 18x24 inch sheets of heavy paper that is now mummy-brown with age and crumbling at the edges.



The scrapbook's creator has provided notes and captions for many of the exhibits. Some are typed on separate pieces of paper and then glued in. Many are inked or penciled directly onto the page in his own hand. Huddleston's comments are usually couched in dry cop-talk, salted with occasional flippant remarks. In several instances he has returned to the photo to add a notation of the arrest and sentencing, or execution of the perpetrator.



Nudity and explicit sex are far more easily available now than are clear images of death. The quasi-violence of movies and television dwells on the lively acts of killing -- flying kicks, roaring weapons, crashing cars, flaming explosions. These are the mortal equivalents of old-time cinematic sex. The fictional spurting of gun muzzles offer flirtation and seduction but stop a titillating instant short of actual copulation. The results of such aggressive vivacity remain a mystery. The corpse itself, riddled and gaping, swelling or dismembered, the action of heat and bacteria, of mummification or decay are the most illicit pornography.



This is the reality as opposed to the fantasy image of violence provided by cinematic fictions in which the victim dies fast if not instantly from one stab wound, one shot in the heart. That happens, of course. But anyone who's worked in an emergency room knows you also might be stabbed 20 times and still walk into the E.R. carrying your intestines in both hands and asking earnest questions, "How am I doing?" or "Does my insurance cover this?"



They say man is the animal that knows it will die, but most days we're too deliberately stupid to fear death. We fear ways of dying. We dread pain and panic, chaos and the crushing humiliation of helplessness, the red shame of spewing bowels and bladder -- the same things we fear in life. A steer in the slaughterhouse knows as much about death as we do, most days. This is a book about all those fears and the one beyond that we seldom confront.

Dr. Ikkaku Ochi Collection

Oh, what a gorgeous book! It is much smaller than most photo books, a duodecimo (translation for non-book-nerds: 5 inches by 8). Like a book of cabinet cards, compact, very easy to carry around so I can look at it on impromptu walks/picnics.

There are no annotations on this one so here is an excerpt from the intro (by the way, that bit about boxes from baby art blog was from the intro as well):

There were altogether 365 photographs in the box -- five on glass plates, the rest were albumin prints on cardboard. There were eye, skin, and venereal diseases, moreover they also showed tumors and congenital deformities. 150 photographs were numbered on the back, complemented by the name of the photographer's studio and the name of the disease. Hence, you could assume that it was a complete set. Besides this set, the box contained photographs by the medical faculty of the University of Kyoto (Daisan-Kotochugakko) in Okayama (the prefecture of Okayama is in the south of Japan, bordering on Hiroshima to the west), some portraits and class photographs. These images were signed on the back by a certain Ikkaku Ochi with his name and address. Ochi was born on February 15 (or June 12), 1875, in Uedono-mura in Sanken-gun in the prefecture of Hiroshima. In 1895, he graduated from the medical faculty of the University of Kyoto in Okayama, together with 62 other students. In 1896, he joined the Japanese army as medical officer until his honorable discharge in 1917. Among others, he served on the frontlines of the Japanese-Russian war (1904-1905). In 1918, he opened a practice for internal medicine in the city of Hiroshima where he died on January 21, 1930. It is no longer possible to determine how and where he acquired the photographs. Most likely they are educational material he obtained during his studies at the University of Kyoto. Astonishingly, they even survived the nuclear attack on Hiroshima.

Picture Time! Click to BIG.

Mütter Museum: Historic Medical Photographs

(Despite opting for free shipping, all of the books I ordered arrived fairly quickly. And after much wrestling with my arch-nemesis Technology I finally figured out how the dash gonnit scanner works. Yay me. So without further blah-blahness...)

Described as focusing on the museum's archive of "rare historic photographs, most of which have never been seen by the public." Photographs ranging "from Civil War photographs showing injury and recovery, to the ravages of diseases not yet conquered in the 19th century, to pathological anomalies, to psychological disorders" are showcased.

This is a gorgeous book. All photos are large hi-res format. Breathtakingly beautiful. All descriptions are as meticulous and exhaustively detailed as possible.

Contents:
Foreword by Max Aguilera-Hellweg, M.D.
Preface by Laura Lindgren
Introduction by Gretchen Worden

Trauma
Bandaging, Dressing, and Splints
Amputation
Hypertrophy, Malformation, and Excess Growth
Congenital Deformity, Deficiency, and Disorder
Paralysis
Disease
Dermatological Disorder
Micrography
Cysts and Tumors
Psychological Disorder
Teratology
Autopsy and Dissection

Index

"Nature is nowhere accustomed more openly to display her secret mysteries than in cases where she shows traces of her workings apart from the beaten path; nor is there any better way to advance the proper practice of medicine than to give our minds to the discovery of the usual law of nature by the careful investigation of cases of rarer forms of disease. For it has been found in almost all things, that what they contain of useful or of applicable nature, is hardly perceived unless we are deprived of them, or they become deranged in some way." ~ William Harvey, M.D. (1578-1657)

It is the care and concern. The use of a chair. Or a table. The refined borders or an elaborate signature on the print. An oval matte. A sheet of velvet. The pedestal. A painted backdrop. The button-down shirt. The care to wax or grease and part the subject's hair. The classic pose, the sitter staring off, not into the camera but beyond, as if staring into the future, his or her destiny, the very future that is now as we stare back agape, wondering what the hell went wrong here. Something horrible has happened. Birth, war. Or maybe just cancer. The photographer was there. The first photographers. (9, Max Aguilera-Hellweg, M.D.)

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Pictures!!! Click to Biggify...


Photograph, second and third fingernails 6 1/2 inches; fourth 5 inches. From an album by John Glasgow Kerr, M.D. (1824-1901), of photographs of his practice in Canton, China. Fingernails were grown very long among some of the elite in China as a symbol of their high social standing. (70)


Acromegaly, a hormonal disorder resulting from excess growth hormone (GH) production in the pituitary gland. Acromegaly most commonly occurs in middle-aged adults, with abnormal growth of hands and feet and prominence of mandible among the most common signs. Photographer and date unidentified. (80)


Case of congenital deficiency of the femurs, fingers, and toes. Patient of Dr. DeForest Willard (1846-1910). Photograph by James F. Wood, Philadelphia, ca. 1892-1900. (94)



Dipygus tripus (parasitic twin), case of Blanche Dumas (mislabeled on photographs as "Dumont"), born 1860. Photo left by A. Liebert, right by Pierre Petit, Paris. Inscription on photograph notes: "Pelvis so broad a pelvimeter cannot span it." An illustration of Dumas was published in Part IV (page 168) of the collection of pictures of congenital abnormalities that form the basis of the four-volume atlas Human Monstrosities by Barton Cooke Hirst (1861-1935) and George Arthur Piersol (1856-1924), published 1891-93. Blanche Dumas also appears in Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine (1896) by George Milbury Gould (1848-1922) and Walter Lytle Pyle (1871-1921). (100)


Sloughing lip following smallpox. The smallpox virus commonly caused extensive facial scarring in survivors. Photographer and date unidentified. Donor: Dr. DeForest Willard (1846-1910).




Osteitis deformans (Paget's disease of bone). Anthony Roth, sixty-two, admitted to men's ward of the Philadelphia Hospital April 1899. Photographs taken in March 1900, one year after patient came under observation, showing (above) size of head, frontal tumor, clavicles, and peculiar shape of chest and separation of the knees when ankles are in contact. The patient died shortly afterward. Background in second photo opaqued for reproduction. Reported by Frederick A. Packard, M.D. (1864-1902). Dutton Steele, M.D. (1868-1908), and Thomas Story Kirkbride Jr., M.D. (1868-1900) in The American Journal of Medical Sciences, November 1901. Photographer unidentified.


Unidentified disorder. Patient of James Hendrie Lloyd, M.D. (1853-1932), neurologist to the Philadelphia Hospital and author of "Diseases of the Cerebrospinal and Sympathetic Nerves" (Twentieth Century Practice of Medicine, vol. 11, ed. Thomas L. Stedman, 1897) and others. Photograph by James F. Wood, from the album of photographs by Wood presented to the Mutter Museum in 1898, ca. 1892-1900. (140)


Cyclocephalus (cyclencephaly, cerebral hemispheres fused and underdeveloped). From Part III of the collection of pictures of congenital abnormalities that form the basis of the four-volume atlas Human Monstrosities, by Barton Cooke Hirst (1861-1935) and George Arthur Piersol (1856-1924), published 1891-93. Donor: Dr. B.C. Hirst.


Skeleton of cyclocephalus in the Wistar Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. From Part III of the collection of pictures of congenital abnormalities that form the basis of the four-volume atlas Human Monstrosities, by Barton Cooke Hirst (1861-1935) and George Arthur Piersol (1856-1924), published 1891-93. Photograph opaqued for reproduction. Donor: Dr. B.C. Hirst


Tuberculosis of the joints. Photographed by William H. Rhoads, Philadelphia, undated, ca. 1866-98.


Elephantiasis, or lymphatic filariasis, a disease caused by an infestation of mosquito-borne filarial worms that block lymphatic channels and cause an accumulation of fluid in the tissues resulting in chronic severe swelling and enlargement. Photograph unidentified.

Smiling in a Jar

In preparation for the small sampling of Mutter Museum book photos I'll be sharing, I present excerpts from "Smiling in a Jar". An episode from Errol Morris' documentary series First Person featuring Gretchen Worden, then museum director (1947-2004). I could listen to her talk all day, what a fantastic voice. I like her take on the museum very much. In the forward of the first Mutter book (a collection of photos of the exhibits), Worden writes, "While these bodies may be ugly, there is a terrifying beauty in the spirits of those forced to endure these afflictions."

Smiling in a Jar
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Epidermolysis Bullosa

From Wiki: "The skin has two layers; the outer layer is called the epidermis and the inner layer the dermis. In normal individuals, there are protein anchors, made of collagen, between the two layers that prevent them from moving independently from one another (shearing). In people born with EB, the two skin layers lack the protein anchors that hold them together, and any action that creates friction between the layers (like rubbing or pressure) will create blisters and painful sores. Sufferers of EB have compared the sores to third-degree burns."









More clinical photos and info HERE