May 27, 2013

Extraction of the Stone

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Image of the Week #93, May 27th, 2013:From:A Brief History of Mental Illness in Art by Ferris Jabr at Brainwaves. Source: Extraction of the Stone of Folly by Hieronymus Bosch circa 1488 - 1516 (www.rijksmuseum.nl, via Wikimedia Commons) Before mental illness was at all understood, in the Middle Ages people blamed mental problems on a "stone" inside their body, usually in the skull. This painting shows a man asking a surgeon to remove this troublesome stone. Surely the ensuing infection after such a medical procedure wouldn't have helped the patient's mental state much. NOTE: This was a very difficult week to choose the Image. Apart from several other great images in Ferris' post, there were also other posts chockful of interesting art, e.g., The Art and Science of the Diagram: Communicating the Knowledge of the Heavens, the Earth and the Arcane, Final Part by Clarissa Ai Ling Lee, and Protist-y art continued: the protist zodiac by Psi Wavefunction - check both of those posts out as well.

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