gruesome but awesome

Keeping cadavers around is rarely practical. And if you were a medical student during the 18th and 19th centuries it was rare to witness a dissection. So many medical schools ordered wax models for students to learn about the body. One of the most well-regarded artists in this field was Clementi Susini, a portion of whose work is housed in Bologna's Palazzo Poggi. There you could see bodies built up from bone, to muscle, to skin, with partial models showing healthy kidneys versus failing ones, hearts, lungs.

But probably the largest part of the collection was devoted to showing difficulties with childbirth. If you are pregnant and live in a country that doesn't have C-sections, stop reading this. If you are pregnant and live in a country that does have C-sections, be really thankful for them. There were breach babies, babies that were backwards, babies where one arm exited first (just by looking at it you could tell that was a death sentence for mother and baby). They showed how a midwife's hand should enter the uterus to try and rotate a baby, and gruesomely, they showed the hand of a midwife that improperly entered, perforating the uterus and inevitably causing a mortal loss of blood for the mother.

It was both horrifying and incredibly educational. I understand more about the human body during pregnancy than I probably ever wanted to know....