Teaching watercolor showing a severe bend in the spine with the ankylosis of five vertebrae and a healed spine that suffered from fracture and dislocation

Teaching watercolor showing a severe bend in the spine with the ankylosis of five vertebrae and a healed spine that suffered from fracture and dislocation

Bone and Bones

Spine

Henry Jacob Bigelow Watercolor Collection

Wallis, Oscar

Bigelow, Henry Jacob, 1818-1890

Teaching Aids and devices

Teaching Methods

Harvard Medical School. Department of Anatomy

Fitz, Reginald, 1885-1953

After Jean Cruveilhier's Anatomie pathologique du corps humain, vol. 1, liv. 4, pl. 4

Large watercolor showing the bones of the spinal column. The top image shows a spine bent at an extreme angle forwards and down. Several of the vertebrae have fused. The lower right image is a cross section showing the interior of the same spine, so that the channel for the nerves is visible. The lower left image shows the lower part of a different spine that has healed after a fracture and dislocation. The spine is off-center and tissue joins the two parts. Watercolor is framed in green sewn textile, with metal grommets in each of the four corners. On the verso are stamps of the fabric company that made the backing fabric.

Wallis, Oscar

1848-1854

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Accessing collections in the Warren Anatomical Museum and the Warren Anatomical Museum archive requires advanced notice. Please submit a request to Public Services at chm@hms.harvard.edu to access the displayed item

Warren Anatomical Museum (21142.173)

Original work can be found in the Countway Rare Books Collection (f Treadwell 1101)

image

watercolors (paintings)

21142.173

Henry Jacob Bigelow employed artist Oscar Wallis exclusively from 1848 - 1854 to paint a series of large teaching watercolors to illustrate Bigelow's lectures at Harvard Medical School. Wallis painted the teaching diagrams from local subjects and from the atlases of established medical authorities. The effort cost Bigelow $6,000. In 1890 Bigelow presented the watercolors to Reginald H. Fitz to be used in the Harvard Medical School's Department of Anatomy. The watercolors were transferred into the Warren Anatomical Museum between 1890 and 1930.

69 W x 100 H cm