My father once bought several volumes of medical textbooks as a job lot from a secondhand bookshop. Why he did this I’m not quite sure. Perhaps he liked their fine red leather covers, their marbled pages, the beautiful yet gruesome illustrations of diseases contained therein. Perhaps he thought these fine volumes matched our home’s interior decor? Or maybe he hoped my brother or myself would one day study these antique books and become a medical practitioner? I certainly considered it. Indeed I nearly did apply for medicine at university but changed my mind at the last moment and chose a rather pointless arts course—my real intention had been to go to Art College and paint…but that’s another story.

However, I did spend many, many, probably far too many hours poring over these books and their fabulous colored plates of medical diseases, internal organs, autopsies, arterial systems, genitals, brains and what have you. I marveled as much at the complexity and wonder of the human body and its diseases as I did at the beauty of the illustrations. These were to me works of art that deserved to be hung in some gallery rather than just hidden away for the education of young minds.

Illustrations of different diseases and conditions provided an essential part in the development of medical treatment. All doctors need a good memory so they can recognize symptoms, ailments and you know body parts—and the work of illustrators in accurately depicting different forms of diseases—leprosy, syphilis or smallpox, etc—were central to a doctor making the right call in a patient’s’ diagnosis and treatment.

This is a tiny small collection of some of the vast number of disturbingly beautiful illustrations produced by artists for medical practitioners during the late 1700s to the early 1900s—and they are quite fantastic.

And the moral of my story? Well, if you ever get the choice between an arts course and studying medicine…do medicine because you can truly help people and maybe even make a shit load of money while you’re doing it.
 

A thirteen-year-old Girl with leprosy.
 

A thirteen-year-old Boy with severe untreated leprosy.
 

Differentiating between two types of leprosy.
 

 

A before and after illustration of a 23-year-old Viennese woman suffering form cholera.
 

Man with large pendant face tumor.
 

Man with forehead tumors.
 

Hand drawn textured illustrations by Kanda Gensen from Japanese medical treatise depicting smallpox.
 

Smallpox illustration from Kanda Gensen’s treatise on the disease.
 

Depiction of patient with erythema.
 

Illustration from Medical College of Calcutta depicting an extreme case of the skin condition ichthyosis hystrix.
 

Man with untreated syphilis.
 

Man with severe syphilitic pustule crustaceous lesions.
 

Baby with hereditary syphilis.
 

Baby’s feet with syphilis lesions.
 

Hands with paronychia, an infection of the nails associated with tertiary syphilis.
 

Syphilis lesions on the tongue.
 

Mouth erosion from diphtheritic papules.
 
H/T Guardian, Wired, Wiki Commons and Slate.