Here Are The Old Pop-Up Books Doctors Used To Learn How To Perform Surgery

It’s always amazing to look back at how terribly simple things once were. These pop-up books, for example, are intricately layered to show the various organs in a human body. Doctors would use ‘em for practice surgery runs. [Laughing Squid]

It’s such simple technology—if I can even call it that—that it’s incredible that people used these materials to learn about our body and cut with confidence. I especially love how the video uses scalpels to flip each page. The books are part of the Animated Anatomies exhibition at the Duke University Perkins Library through July 17, 2011. Some of these anatomical pop-up books go back to the 16th century.

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(3 Comments)
  • [–]

    Steve

    Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 1:42 PM

    We still have these in our anatomy labs. But they’ve been supplanted by plastic models since the turn of the last century I believe…

  • [–]

    Brian

    Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 9:45 PM

    We used cadavers in our anatomy labs.

    Cheers to bequest donors for advancing healthcare
    :)

  • [–]

    Amy

    Friday, May 20, 2011 at 3:59 PM

    Those are page turners, not scalpels.

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