Directory:

It is a tentative hand composing these pages and intending a convenience of art and medicine that is more than idle commentary. The two methodologies could not be more opposed. Whereas medicine is concrete and local, the arts are abstract and global. What the scalpel divides ad infinitum, the paintbrush and pen gather up ex nihilo.

And yet the experienced practitioner will recognize a degree of circumflexion in the path of his discipline. Like the adventuring Poliphilo, the artist or physician climbs a tower of intellect only to find a confusion at the top that pulls him back to earth. Experience will show that these two flights of stairs merge at some point and that each step up one staircase dissolves into a descent down the other. With this understanding, sense can be made of the unearthly quality in the paintings of Leonardo DaVinci. One can also appreciate why in the early 1850's Doctor Hugh Diamond believed he could cure his patients through photography or why so many physicians of the 1800's were also accomplished writers and artists.

Here in the Cabinet of Art and Medicine will be found the artifacts of Poliphilo's confusion. For the artist, because of the importance of photography in art, a bibliography of the first medical books printed with photographs is being compiled. The physician will find the nineteenth century science of Curschmann's Klinische Abbildungen remarkable for the humanity of its presentation. The writer will find illumination in the searching poems of John Wood. All scholars are invited to use the resources here, but not to cut whole cloth.

What's new:

The Cabinet Journal has information on the most recent pages added to the website. Clicking the spinning heart on the home page will also bring up the journal.

About the author:

I am an artist, husband and father living in Brooklyn, New York with a collection of old medical books, mostly the first texts that were illustrated with photographs. A selection of paintings by my hand can be viewed here:

Narrative Paintings

All inquiries should be directed to :

Copyright:

All text and images in the Cabinet of Art and Medicine are under copyright protection. Permission to republish anything is required and can be obtained by contacting Mark Rowley. In most cases, reproduction fees are waived in lieu of a small donation sent to the rare book room of the New York Academy of Medicine.