Anatomy Atlas Part 7 – Pelvis

This is the last drawing in the Anatomy atlas that is about skeleton.

Pelvis is most ingenous in many ways. Not only is the hip joint  bearing most of the weight, it is second most flexible joint in human body, with three axes of freedom just like the shoulder joint, only in lesser degree. Further the whole structure must be flexible enough to allow for birth.

Pelvis skeleton

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Today’s stories ar more sad than interesting and they are both about the skeleton we used for learning.

When teaching assistant brought the box with skeleton in the class her emphasised ” These are not casts, these are real bones. Please be aware that you are handling the remains of a real human being, so treat them with dignity. Memento mori – you too shall perish.”.

I was wondering why he feels the need to say that, we are all adults over twenty years of age, surely we need not be reminded of that like some adolescents? Well, not long after he has left the class one future gym teacher was showing off in front of a few of his laughing female classmates with a femur used as a microphone for pretend singing. My opinion of them all dropped significantly and I never forgot that sight. That was one of many proofs that in every social gathering will inevitably be someone who insist on being an asshole and someone who enables them in being an asshole.

Second story is about the dead man himself. He did not have completely fused os sacrum, with the top vertebra being free. And his whole pelvis was assymetrical and deformed on one side, with the openning for nervus ischiadicus being pinched and ground between that free vertebra and the fused rest. The teaching assistant told us that the man must have suffered from immense pain his whole life and that this was assumed to be the reason why he dies at relatively young age with probable cause of death being suicide by means of unknown poison. Whenever I remember that story I wish he had better options to deal with that problem.

No. That’s Just Wrong.

I was happily lost in The Public Domain Review the other day, and came across High Frequency Electric Currents in Medicine and Dentistry from 1910. I know there was great excitement over electricity, and there were phases of “miracle cures” where it was concerned, but in this case, it was the photos which got my attention, including one which just about had me screaming, and I’m not even a parent:

The text reads:

Plate XXII. – This beautiful picture (as exquisite as Manet’s “Boy with the Sword” which is one of the classics of the Painting Art), sets forth this boy bringing his pocket “Tesla” for the enjoyment of his beloved tonic. His sturdy strength at the age of three is a tribute to the efficacy of high frequency currents, for at the age of three days, when his treatment with them was begun, he was an illy-thriving and frail infant with but the feeblest hold on life. Look at him well, and think how many myriads of pallid children – of all ages – need the same remedy.

There is So. Much. Wrong. there, it just leaves me sputtering. Applying electrical currents to a three day old infant? All I can think is how very easily that could kill said infant. As for the photo being as exquisite as Boy with a Sword, let’s see:

L'Enfant à l'épée'' par Edouard Manet, 1861.

L’Enfant à l’épée’ par Edouard Manet, 1861.

Yeah, I don’t think there’s any honest comparison there at all. There are other questionable and frightening photos to be seen with the magical Tesla wand, but have a care, there’s some nudity, so NSFW.

The Healing Arts: Les Mangeurs d’Huitres, La Luxure, Le Magnetisme, Les Lunettes.

Still with Louis-Léopold Boilly. I know La Luxure is supposed to be creepy, but Boilly outdid himself there. :shudder: But I do love Le Lunettes. All images, click for full size.

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Les Mangeurs d'Huitres (aphrodisiacs), Lithograph, 1825.

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Les Mangeurs d’Huitres (aphrodisiacs), Lithograph, 1825.

Louis-Léopold Boilly, La Luxure (Lechery), Lithograph, 1824.

Louis-Léopold Boilly, La Luxure (Lechery), Lithograph, 1824.

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Le Magnetisme (Hypnotism), Lithograph, 1826.

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Le Magnetisme (Hypnotism), Lithograph, 1826.

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Les Lunettes (Eyeglasses), Lithograph, undated.

Louis-Léopold Boilly, Les Lunettes (Eyeglasses), Lithograph, undated.

S Is For Spirulina.

Spirulina.

A while back I was involved in preparing an activity for kids as part of a science outreach event, the goal was to show them some bacterial diversity and how different bacteria look, both macroscopically (and for that we tried our best at Petri Dish Art, I highly recommend you look that up) and microscopically. As I was scanning through a wet mount of Arthrospira platensis (spirulina), I found this delightful S-shaped filament (called a trichome) and couldn’t resist. The quality isn’t very good, this was taken by hand-holding my phone over the microscope’s eyepiece.

  1. platensis is a cyanobacterium, a photosynthetic organism that gets its energy and food from sunlight and carbon dioxide just like plants do. Unlike many cyanobacteria, A. platensis does not produce toxins and that’s why it can be used as a food supplement. Its cells typically associate into spiral-shaped filaments but what you see here is a fragment of a spiral that has taken a S-like shape. If you zoom in you can see the individual cells and at the bottom right of the picture there is a single cell. No staining was done, they are naturally green because of the chlorophyll.

Click for full size!

© Nightjar, all rights reserved.

Goodies!

From Voyager & Jack, so very sweet of you! I was momentarily afraid Rick was going to just drink the maple syrup, then I tasted it…ohhhh. I’m gonna be wanting pancakes. And I just ran out of Burt’s Bees! I could never go wrong with Wonder Woman at my side, and my thanks for the tea! And all the rest – Rick gave me the raspberry & orange chocolates, and oh, I don’t even have words for how utterly om nom nom it is. Thank you so very much.

Head Full of Thorns.

I’ve had thorns in my head for well over a week, and finally got started on drawing yesterday, still not done on that front, but I had to play with colour a bit today. I’ve been working late, then falling into bed, not scheduling anything on Affinity, so if I’m late, or space out regular features, blame the thorns in my head. This one is going to take a long time, too. It’s large, filled with detail, and I’m going with pencil instead of paint, which is always slower for me. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to work, I’m now consumed with the need. Bad photo:

© C. Ford, all rights reserved.

Scott Lively: The Voice For Authentic Conservative Homosexuals.

All around repugnant, immoral, evil person, Scott Lively has a new shtick in his bid for governor of Massachusetts: he’s going to be the voice of all those nice, properly closeted, quiet, conservative queers, who understand that heterosexuality must remain dominant. Mr. Lively is doing his damnedest to come across as reasonable and tolerant. Not at all the same Scott Lively who once called for the execution of all queer folk, no, no. If you want to read his glurgetastic appeal to “authentic conservative homosexuals”, you can do that at Lively on “Gays”. If you’ve eaten today, you might want to wait a while. In the meantime:

“One of my goals here in this campaign is I want to establish sort of a profile of what an authentic conservative homosexual looks like,” Lively said, quickly making clear that this should not be construed to mean that he would consider “ever endorsing homosexuality, because it’s something condemned by God.”

Lively asserted that “authentically conservative” gay voters are nothing like “the gay progressives,” because the former place “an emphasis on personal privacy instead of gay pride parades cramming it down everybody’s throats.”

Lively said that gay rights activists today are part of a “radical cultural Marxist warfare” movement whereas the founders of the fight for gay rights were simply seeking “the right to be left alone,” which is something he is willing to support because “we should respect people’s right to be wrong, because in God’s perfect timing, he works with every person.”

This is a truly astonishing pile of shit. I don’t believe for one second that Lively has at all softened his views on queer people, he has been utterly virulent in his hate and condemnation of them for decades. He really wants that governorship though, and he’s obviously more than willing to lie his arse off in order to obtain said office. I sincerely hope the people of Massachusetts show Mr. Lively the curb.

Lively declared that as long as gay conservatives “agree that mainstream society should be—and must be—heterosexual,” then society should be willing to accommodate them, especially when faced with the threat that the “gay cultural supremacy being driven by the hard-left progressives” is creating an environment in which “the natural family may actually be facing extinction.”

That is not going to happen. If anything, climate change will get us first, but people are not going to stop breeding. The majority of people on this planet are hetero, and most of them either want or end up with children, and there’s a fucktonne of people on this planet.

“If the concept of male and female complementarity actually becomes criminalized, and that’s where this is headed,” Lively warned, “we’re going to face some really serious problems.”

No, that is NOT where we are headed, you melodramatic asshole. Some people are now learning about gender, and coming to understand it properly, and expanding on the rigid gender definitions which have defined, and often devastated generations of people. That’s not a threat to hetros in any way whatsoever. Family has become a much larger umbrella, to embrace all manner of configurations, and in many cases, extended families are coming back, which is a good thing, because there’s a lot of support in that. There are a whole lot of children out there who are in desperate need of homes, and assholes like you, Mr. Lively, would stop queer folk from providing those homes. It’s good to remember that you don’t actually care about any people outside of evangelical fringe, and all you want is the power to oppress.

RWW has the full story.

The Healing Arts: Les Sangsues, La Gourmandise, La Felicité Parfaite, & Les Ivrognes.

Still with Louis-Léopold Boilly. Click for full size!

Les Sangsues, Louis-Léopold Boilly, Lithograph,1827.

Les Sangsues, Louis-Léopold Boilly, Lithograph,1827.

La Gourmandise, Louis-Léopold Boilly, Lithograph,1824.

La Gourmandise, Louis-Léopold Boilly, Lithograph,1824.

La Felicité Parfaite, Louis-Léopold Boilly, Lithograph.

La Felicité Parfaite, Louis-Léopold Boilly, Lithograph.

Les Ivrognes, Louis-Léopold Boilly, Lithograph, 1828.

Les Ivrognes, Louis-Léopold Boilly, Lithograph, 1828.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

We went to the park again today and I can’t get over how much the goslings have grown in just a few days. They’re at a sort of “homely cute” stage with beaks that look too big for their heads, fuzzy hairdo’s that stick out in all directions and the beginnings of eye marks that make them look sleepy. I think they’re adorable. The parents keep a careful watch, but don’t seem to mind us being around. These are park geese who live here all year and are very used to people and dogs. Of course, Jack is also pretty laid back and usually lays quietly on the grass while I take  photos.