The Sick Rose: Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration

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First published in Songs of Innocence and Experience in 1794, it is one Blake's best-known poems, while also remaining one of his most enigmatic. Bizarre and captivating images, including close-up details and revealing cross-sections, make all too clear the fascinations of both doctors and artists of the time The Sick Rose is a visual tour through the golden age of medical illustration.

The Sick Rose - ARTBOOK|D.A.P. The Sick Rose - ARTBOOK|D.A.P.

They are founded in the practices of dissection, and they are parasitic upon the dead, sometimes the body-snatched or executed. Blake's prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the language". The colour's are soft and faint but in a way that highlights the softness of the flesh compared to the hardness of sickness and infection. What actual evidence did people have to believe that a literal tiny cow was going to spring from their body if they got the same disease as cows? Richard Barnett serves up fascinating synopses of the cardinal diseases of the period, each chapter dotted with grisly factoids- even acknowledging the role of state power, imperialism, and abjection in the manufacture of these images.It has a fine philosophical way of seeing the practises and breakthroughs of the medical world, of how human nature affected not only how disease is treated but also how it is treated. The pictures, as gruesome as they are beautiful, just increased my fascination of the human body, its insurrections and decomposition and how it has been perceived through time. The Sick Rose” Disease and the Art of Medical Illustration, by academic medical historian Dr Richard Barnett. For a time, condemned criminals were routinely sentenced to death and public dissection, their bodies donated to the Medical Institutes*.

Sick Rose Disease Art by Barnett Richard - AbeBooks

Genuine color plates used for medical training, some are people who have been infected others are taken from dissected parts. This evocative overview, incorporating historic maps, charts, medical instruments and case notes, reveals the fears and preoccupations of an era at the mercy of epidemics, infection and bodily decay.In this interpretation, what the poem presents us with is the constant conflict and tension between life (with all of its pleasures and joys) and death (which is always present in the background). As was the case in Blake’s day, and in many places is still of importance today, the loss of virginity doomed a woman’s prospects for the rest of her life. I'm certainly more interested in Gensen's techniques, than in (say) the well-known historical use of mercury to treat venereal diseases. His visual artistry has led one modern critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced.

Summary and Analysis of The Sick Rose | William Blake Summary and Analysis of The Sick Rose | William Blake

The chapters are exactly the right length to hold our attention, and being broken up by inserts of medical illustrations make sure we are not only interested in what we learn of but also highly informed. It is possible to see the worm as a symbol of death, given that worms are associated with decay and are commonly said to feed upon the dead (we are ‘food for worms’ in our graves). The color plates themselves are printed in high quality; there was not a single plate in the book where the colors did not line up perfectly. Subjects covered range from tuberculosis (which, like gout, had great cache among the romantic and well-heeled) and sexually transmitted diseases.The libidinal characters in the juvenile mind are regularly deterred and censored due to social exclusion and fallacy. In his excellent study of Blake’s poetry, Blake’s Contrary States: The ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ as Dramatic Poems , D. His work has been characterized as part of the Romantic movement, or even "Pre-Romantic", for its largely having appeared in the 18th century. Perhaps, though, the shame is not the result of some evil desire or deed but of Christian indoctrination: especially during Blake’s own time, sexual desire was viewed with suspicion and shame by many, as a result (in large part) of Christian teaching, which taught that it was sinful unless it took place within marriage (and, in many teachings, purely for the purpose of procreation, rather than pleasure).