Biomedical Ephemera, or: A Frog for Your Boils

Wax anatomical models of man and woman; half-skeleton, half-living, in fashionable Regency garments.

It’s unknown if these models were intended as a darkly comic “memento mori” sort of novelty, or a teaching aid, or both.

The skeletons are accurate enough to have been used to teach students how the articulations line up in the living body, so even as a novelty, they may have had an educational use.

Models located at Science Museum London, originally created ca. 1810-1830.