"George's Arms" : A Guest Post by Evan Michelson, Morbid Anatomy Scholar in Residence and Star of TV's Oddities

Following is a guest post by Evan Michelson, Morbid Anatomy Library scholar in residence and star of TV's Oddities. Here, she tells the fascinating story of "George's Arms" (seen above), her contribution to our current Collector's Cabinet exhibition, which closes March 29th.

You can see Evan speak in person about objects in her collection at our closing party on March 29th, on which more here; you can also purchase a full color, illustrated exhibition catalog with texts written by the collectors (only eight dollars!) here.

Antique and vintage prosthetics are uncanny, beautiful objects. They are almost always anonymous, whatever stories they have to tell being limited (at best) to a name inked or carved into the wood. This particular pair of prosthetic arms, however, comes not just with a name, but with an inspiring tale of survival, courage and human resilience. They belonged to Mr. George Hunlock of Danville, PA, a brakeman for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. The railroad carried both freight (primarily coal) and passengers along a busy route from Pennsylvania to upstate New York. These arms date to the turn of the 20th century, but Mr. Hunlock’s horrific accident occurred a bit earlier, sometime in the 1880s. At that time, George Hunlock’s job as railroad brakeman was one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

In the early days of the railroad brakes had to be gradually, manually engaged on each individual car. This meant that the brakeman had to jump from car to car on the roof of a moving train (often braving the bitter cold and dangerous, icy conditions). On freight lines the brakeman usually rode in an open cabin on the outside of the car; sometimes he simply clung to a ladder, or even rode on the roof. In the summer the brakeman baked in the sun, in the winter he froze in snow and ice. When it rained, he was drenched. It was dirty, exhausting work. The brakes were engaged using heavy wheels or levers; it was a gradual process that involved repeated trips back-and-forth along the length of the train. It was not uncommon for brakemen to be mangled or killed on the job (one early report estimated that 10 brakemen died every day in the US in the performance of their duties). Brakemen were very poorly paid, and the job was often allotted to the illiterate and uneducated (presumably because such people were considered to be the most expendable). In the 19th century the railroad companies were shielded from lawsuits, and the costs associated with injury were often not compensated: even if a brakeman survived his accident, his family was still facing financial ruin.

There is no detailed record of the accident itself, but George Hunlock (like so many before him) apparently slipped underneath a moving railroad car, and his arms were crushed (or possibly severed altogether). Such an accident would be catastrophic today, but in the late 19th century survival itself would have seemed nearly miraculous. Antiseptics, anesthesia and the sterilization of instruments in surgical amputations were still relatively primitive procedures, and pain killers were opiate derivatives that eventually caused addiction. Mr. Hunlock undoubtedly benefitted, however, from advancements made during the recently-concluded American Civil War, which had brought about a revolution in the science of limb amputation.

It is extraordinary, then, that George Hunlock did not just survive his terrible ordeal - he thrived. He was given another job at the railroad, where he served as a watchman at crossings, using his wooden arms to wave a lantern to warn of oncoming trains. His arms (provided by J.Condell and Son) are heavy by today’s standards - stiff, wooden affairs - and the fingers (with the exception of a spring-loaded thumb) are not fully articulated. Despite this lack of prosthetic dexterity, George Hunlock mastered his new limbs: he could eat, light his pipe and (most incredibly) he developed handwriting that was “clear and distinct.” Contemporary newspaper reports say that he wrote “better with his wooden hand than most men can with their natural hands.”

George's prosthetic arms were found at a house sale many years ago, packed in a wooden box labeled “Dad’s Arms.” They were accompanied by newspaper articles detailing Mr. Hunlock’s bravery. Also in the box was all his correspondence with the limb manufacturers, and a stack of old ledgers (signed “George Hunlock”) from George’s second career as a tobacconist. The account books contain neat, precise handwriting that span several years. The dealer who bought the arms was told by a family member that the writing (incredibly enough) is George’s very own.

On the Collection and Display of Human Remains: Guest Post by Evan Michelson, TV's "Oddities" and Morbid Anatomy Museum

The debate about the ethics of collecting and displaying human remains went mainstream recently with this CNN article about a man who stole over sixty human brains and other specimens from the Indiana Medical History Museum and tried to sell them on Ebay. Morbid Anatomy Museum's scholar in residence Evan Michelson is a researcher into the history of such collections, in contexts both sacred and secular. Following is her thoughtful and considered response to the CNN article, which went so far as to single out her show "Oddities" as "being illustrative of a growing trend for collecting curiosities, particularly anatomical specimens."

A CNN article published on January 3, 2014 chronicled the arrest of a young man who stole some early brain specimens from an Indiana medical museum to sell on Ebay. In the article the TV show "Oddities" was cited as being illustrative of a growing trend for collecting curiosities, particularly anatomical specimens. Said the executive director of the museum: "it's definitely bizarre. It's infuriating that they do not have respect for the human remains." This statement raises a few important points: I think everyone can agree that the illegal buying, selling and hoarding of exhumed or pilfered human remains is deeply disrespectful, repugnant, and indefensible on moral and legal grounds. No one can condone or defend such ghoulish goings-on. What is not being addressed, however, is an unavoidable truth: humans have always lived with, loved, and learned from our dead.

The urge to collect, display and venerate human remains is nothing new: it stretches back through the millennia, and plays a vital role in the history of science, medicine and many religions across cultures and around the globe.The widespread practice of ancestor worship originated at a time before recorded history (and is still practiced to this day). The gathering of bones is an irrepressible and primal human urge. Humans have long honored our dead with altars, elevating bones (particularly skulls) to a level of intimate spiritual totem. In many cultures the presence of human remains brings both comfort and continuity. From the Tibetan Kanling (a flute made from a human thigh bone) to the mummies of Palermo to the gorgeous calligraphy of 19th century French memorial hair work, to be in the material presence of the dead is to be one with generations past, to commune with the spirits, to ask favors, to remember, to harness power and to connect with the infinite.

In the service of science and medicine, human remains (such as those pilfered from the museum) have long been essential. It is only through contact with the dead that the secrets of the living have been revealed. The great anatomical insights of the classical physician and philosopher Galen (who primarily studied the anatomy of primates and pigs) are often overshadowed by the many glaring inaccuracies. These fatal mistakes ruled the study of anatomy for more than 1300 years, until anatomists like Andreas Vesalius delved into the human body proper to uncover a more accurate and comprehensive map of our internal architecture. In the 16th century depictions of these anatomical discoveries entered our collective human consciousness, and human dissections became works of high art and an essential part of the great humanist movement that flowed through the Renaissance and powered the scientific revolution. There followed the era of the beautiful corpse, when ceroplasts like Ercole Lelli and Clemente Susini created wax corpses and anatomical moulages of such surpassing beauty and accuracy that they inspired Popes, Emperors and commoners alike to see human anatomy as an important discipline worthy of respect and wonder. The human corpus had at last become a part of high and low common visual culture.

The preservation and display of actual human remains is a time-honored tradition in the great Positivist cities of the Western world, and most centers of learning had their own anatomical collections. These specimens of human anatomy were artfully prepared and displayed, and they illustrate the collective human journey from the realm of superstition through the refinements of natural philosophy and eventually to the rise of modern science. Exhibitions like "Body Worlds" still draw large crowds, eager to examine up-close what is so often kept hidden, and so often considered taboo. The sourcing of the "Body Worlds" cadavers is cause for justified legal and moral scrutiny, but their public display is an enlightening, time-honored tradition. For centuries, museums of anatomy have housed human specimens that are at once didactic, metaphorical and breathtakingly beautiful. These anatomized specimens can still be seen on exhibition in museums and in private collections, and they still provide unparalleled insight into our earthly selves. Anatomy is now digitized, and our bodies (down to a microscopic level) are available at the click of a button, but there is no substitute for the visceral presence of preserved anatomy; it is the best way to know ourselves.

Nowhere is the power of human remains more evident than in the evolution of the Christian religion and the rise of the Roman Catholic Church; there the collection and adoration of human body parts reached its artistic and spiritual pinnacle. The cult of the saints guaranteed that human remains would take center stage in the evolving political, economic and spiritual journey of the West. Religious pilgrims travelled great distances to be in the presence of the bones of the early martyrs, and the wealth thus generated drove an unprecedented competition for relics and a trade in human body parts (particularly in Western Europe) that determined the power centers of the modern world. We are all living in a map shaped by the preservation, display and possession of the dead.

The Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, Sri Lanka is home to the tooth of the Buddha, one of the most celebrated relics on Earth. Once a year the relic is featured at a 10 day festival that includes fire dancers, musicians, street performers and scores of elephants. It draws an estimated crowd of one million participants, making it one of the largest Buddhist gatherings in the world. It is obvious that there is something irresistible about our anatomy, something that reaches us on a primal level. We fear and worship human remains, we shun death but we are irresistibly drawn to the dead. That young man who stole those brains broke the law and showed great disrespect in the commission of that crime. The instinct to collect, display and commune with the dead, however, is not as bizarre or disrespectful as some may think: it connects us with our earthly selves, and allows us to glimpse eternity.

Image sourced here.

On Saint Agatha and Preserved Breasts: Guest Post by Evan Michelson, TV's "Oddities" and Morbid Anatomy Museum

Below is a guest post by Evan Michelson, board member of The Morbid Anatomy Museum and co-star of TV's "Oddities," from our recent trip exploring the history of the preservation and display of the human body in Italy. Text by Evan, and photo by myself.

Joanna Ebenstein shot this at the Museo di Anatomia Umana located in the medical school in Pisa, Italy. I am holding a human breast, preserved through mercury injection using the Mascagni technique; you can still see the metal glistening in the vessels running through the glazed, preserved skin. This specimen has an ancient and somewhat festive look; a cross between a holy relic and marzipan. It is typical of a certain school of Italian anatomical preservation where the line between anatomical didacticism and a more decorative, metaphorical presentation is often blurred.

In Italy, the healing powers of science and medicine often walk hand-in-hand with the miraculous, restorative powers of the saints. St. Agatha of Sicily, patron saint of breast cancer (among other things) is often depicted presenting her amputated breasts on a tray. It is said that Agatha was martyred for being a virtuous woman who refused the advances of a local Roman prelate; in the course of his retaliatory torture her breasts were torn off (a not-uncommon punishment for women, much documented during the Medieval period). St. Peter visited Agatha in her jail cell, where he miraculously restored her mutilated mammaries. 

Breast cancer surgery was frequently (but not always) fatal for most of recorded human history: the cancer was often found too late and the surgery itself, performed in highly unsanitary conditions, often led to serious complications. By the time a woman sought medical help, she was usually in great distress - obviously disfigured and/or in serious pain. A terrifying, risky visit to the surgeon was the only option left to her. It is only relatively recently that early detection and advanced surgical techniques have made seemingly-miraculous breast reconstruction a common occurrence. Anatomical collections like the one in Pisa had an important part to play in the progress of scientific and medical advancement. Mysterious, strangely decorative preservations like this breast are a part of that story.

You can read more of Evan's writings on her Facebook page by clicking here. You can find out more about the museum by clicking here.

Museo di Anatomia Patologica dell'Universitá degli Studi di Firenze : Italy Trip Guest Post by Evan Michelson, TV's "Oddities" and Morbid Anatomy Library

Following, please find one more guest post in which Evan Michelson (2nd photo, right hand side) of "Oddities" fame documents our recent trip through Italy researching the history of the preservation and display of the human corpse.

Here, her response to the amazing Florence pathology museum, or the "Museo di Anatomia Patologica dell'Universitá degli Studi di Firenze"; interestingly, the fine and senstivie pathological waxes you see here were made in the early 19th century by the la Specola workshop, which also brought us Clemente Susini's unforgettable Anatomical Venuses:

The Museo di Anatomia Patologica dell'Universitá degli Studi di Firenze is a happy example of a newly-renovated, early anatomical collection that has been well loved and cared for. The waxes, osteological preparations and wet specimens are all housed in their original, highly ornamental wood and glass display cases, making the place seem more like a treasury than a didactic collection of pain, healing and preserved suffering. Indeed some of the small, ornately jarred specimens, with their delicately handwritten labels are nearly indistinguishable from sacred relics.

The history of this collection goes back to 1824, with the founding of the Medical Society in Florence. It was always intended as a teaching tool for the medical students at the university, and the wax models here are some of the most beautiful examples of the ceroplast's art. The casts were individually commissioned by the anatomy professors and executed by some of the most renowned wax workers of Florence. The result is a 3D catalogue of benign and cancerous tumors, burns, venereal infections, abnormal growths and congenital birth defects, all rendered with the greatest loving care and verisimilitude. The full-sized wax leper could be a saint in any church, his suffering as profound as any wax Christ.

Our guide Gabriella Nesi (2nd image, left; a professor of pathology who has taken the museum under her wing) was particularly eager to point out the models of before-and-after facial reconstructive surgeries, which demonstrated the progress of 19th century plastic surgery by recording not only the sutures and healing wound sites, but the more subtle details like post-surgical stubble on a shaved head. The results are strangely intimate, and we were surprised to learn that many of these models were not only cast from actual patients, but that the museum still has most of the case histories. It is rare to know the story behind any given wax medical model - once a thing has a name, it all becomes unavoidably real.

Although the wax models themselves are breathtaking, it was the presentation of some of the smaller waxes, housed in delicate paper and glass boxes, that drew our attention. These preparations, although clearly intended for a scientific audience, utilize the decorative, visual language of spiritual offerings. Indeed, many of the wax modelers of the 19th century functioned in both the religious and the didactic realm, and the result is a transcendent form of visual art that straddles the spiritual and the scientific, lending the anatomy itself an air of great mystery.

You can find out more about the museum by clicking here; you can see more photos by clicking here or here. You can read future posts by Evan both on this blog and on her Facebook page, which you will find by clicking here. All photographs are my own. Click on images to see larger version.

Santuario delle Grazie (Shrine of Our Lady of Grace), Grazie, Italy : Guest Post by Alessandro Molinengo, Nautilus Shop, Modena

A few days ago, Evan Michelson (third down) and I took the train to Modena (home of Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Balsamic Vinegar) to meet Alessandro Molinengo (top image), a long time internet friend and co-proprietor of the amazing Nautilus Antiques which we had both dreamt of visiting for some years.

After our visit to the shop, Alessandro--who is, it turns out, also an excellent tour guide--suggested we make a trip to check out an obscure church in the tiny town of Grazie, Italy which his business partner  Fausto Gazzi had suggested might interest us. None of us had been there before, so we hopped in the car and went.

This church--the Santuario delle Grazie (or Shrine of Our Lady of Grace)--was a real surprise and an utter, stunning delight, a museum of sorts enshrining arcane forms of worship, collecting, and ex voto usage. What interested Evan the most was the crocodile hanging high in the nave, a hold over from a time when churches would routinely display natural curiosities (see top two images). What interested me the most were the colorful and crudely fashioned statues which filled every available niche. Half of these depicted what appeared to be important church visitors of centuries past, while the other half felt more like a dime museum's house of horrors, peopled with a variety of stiffly posed martyrs meeting imaginatively gruesome ends. Equally fascinating were the thousands of wax anatomical (hands, eyes, breasts, and Bubonic Plague buboes!) ex votos snaking decoratively over every available surface (as seen in all images, but especially 4th down). This pilgrimage church, with its tinny piped-in liturgical music and wax torture museum ambiance, felt somewhere between a circus sideshow and religious Disneyland, less fine art than folk art full of ancient sacred expression in a language we could only barely understand. 

Evan and I had so many questions about this baffling and fascinating place that we asked Alessandro to write a guest post about the church and its history. Following is his post; you can find out more about Allesandro's truly amazing shop (more on that soon!) here (the website) and here (his Facebook page). Stay tuned for a full post on this almost painfully (as I have not much money) wonderful shop, what I would call the Obscura Antiques of Italy.

The Shrine of Our Lady of Grace is a church in Lombard Gothic style, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and is located in the small village of Grazie, close to the town of Curtatone, 9 km from Mantua.

The origins of the church back to 1200, where, on a small promontory rising from the maze of flora and reeds, stood a small altar with the image of the Madonna and Child in which the fishermen of the lake and farmers were especially devoted. The devotion of the people of the area was old and well established; in that time the lake environment was indeed a source of livelihood but also hard work, starvation and disease, superstitions and fears, and this strength of faith was very comforting. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, by the grace received, Francesco Gonzaga built a temple to the Virgin Mary, after the end to an epidemic of The Plague. The construction cost 30,000 gold crowns and in August of 1406 the chapel was consecrated.

Soon after the completion of the basilica, pilgrimages to the church gradually assumed popularity, intensifying with the poor people of the surrounding countries, nobles, and even the Emperor Charles V and Pope Pius II who all came to visit the sacred image of Madonna and Child. So began a series of donations that brought even the original architectural features of the amendment, some important families valances they built chapels for prayer attached to the convent or in the church to bury their ancestors.

From 1412 until the end of the century a convent, school, chapel, and library were added. In 1782 the monastery was closed and converted into a hospital. Thus began the decline of the Basilica. The Napoleonic invasion deprived the collection of votive offerings and many of its treasures, and the material contained in its rich library was dispersed or destroyed, and in 1812 much of the architectural complex was finally dismantled.

The interior is Gothic single nave, and the ceiling is a vault decorated with frescoes of flowers. Upon entering, one is struck by the richness of the walls and its hangings because of a stuffed crocodile that was once located in the Shrine in the fifteenth or sixteenth century now hanging from the ceiling (top 2 images). The middle part of the walls of the nave is lined with full-length wooden structure, with eighty niches arranged in two parallel rows, where many mannequins in various poses and situations representing episodes of danger averted by divine intercession are placed. Today only about forty statues remain. There is no wall, column, corner unadorned; decorations consist of rows of wax anatomical ex votos covering the walls not occupied by statues, drawing snake motifs around columns or below the arches of the niches. You see here ex-votos representing hearts, hands, eyes, breasts, and pestilential buboes (from The Bubonic Plague), which combine to offer the viewer a unique puzzle.

The life-size mannequins you see all around you, as well as their clothing, armor, helmets and weapons were constructed of papier-mâché, and most of them are attributed to Friar Francis Acquanegra, who created in the early 16th century. The statues were constructed of layers of paper and cloth hardened with plaster and painted with colorings and with honey added as a binder; subsequently, several elements were added that were created by casts; also, in some cases, wood was used for face, hands and feet (depending on the pose taken by the manikin), horsehair for hair and acorns for some particulars. As for the clothes, it was discovered that these were created from cotton fabric with hooks applied to statues and date back to the late nineteenth century.

Twelve suits of armor have been reassembled from various statues. It is in fact defensive Gothic-Italian armor made in 1400 that covered completely the rider as they are made from different pieces of steel composed harmoniously ensuring effective protection. Examples of armor like this are extremely rare, if they can find in fact only eleven pieces all over the world, which is why today they are no longer exposed to the monastery but were transferred to the Diocesan Museum Francesco Gonzaga in Mantua. Various hypotheses have been made about the arrival of such prestigious reinforcements in the monastery; they were probably a gift of the Gonzaga family, lords of Mantua, unlike other more modest pieces (but still going back to 1500 ) from other sources.  Under the niches are the metopes explaining in vulgar Italian the grace received as depicted in the dioramic tableau above. Sometimes the mannequins do not coincide with the metope below, a sign that over the years have been the first few shifts. 

A real star of the sanctuary is a crocodile (Crocodilus niloticus) embalmed and hung from the ceiling in the center of the nave. It is a real crocodile, not a model, in its entirety, which was added to the church in the fifteenth or sixteenth century and has recently been the subject of restoration. This is not the only Italian church where you can find such a strange thing; the church of Santa Maria delle Virgin Macerata also has a crocodile hanging, probable gift from Macerata returned from the Crusades.

In ancient times they were seen with promiscuity figures of dragons, crocodiles or snakes and often, in the Christian era, were associated with evil, considered personifications of earthly hell, animals that lead to sin.

The placement of these animals in the churches thus has a strong symbolic meaning, as medieval churches also housed prehistoric fossils, therefore, the animal chained up in the vault of the church means to render it harmless, lock the evil he represents and at the same time expose a concrete reminder to the faithful against human susceptibility to error.

Related to the crocodile "of Grace" and its derivation were born many legends and theories; there are those who believe he was an escapee from the zoo of an exotic private house of Gonzaga; others believe his acquisition was of a more miraculous nature: two boatmen brothers were resting on the bank of the river when all of a sudden one of them was attacked by a crocodile. The other, asking for God's guidance, armed himself with a knife and was able to kill the predator.

It seems that the church in the past was literally covered with all types of weapons, flags and banners from the ceiling and hung dried boats, as well obviously the statues and "panels" in wax reproducing parts of the body that are still present.

Many of these objects are representative of an era, a way of life, habits of rural life of the place, and the social situation of the time. The ex votos depict hands and feet indicate miraculous healings likely to injuries while working in the fields (as also witnessed by the tools and the votive tablets found in other areas of the church), the eyes, the pestiferous boils of the plague, hearts, breasts to bring us to consider the importance of a mother to breastfeed at a time when there were no alternatives to maternal food.

An interesting note is the presence of the ball that allowed the promotion to Series A of the football team of Mantua in 1961. That’s was a real miracle!

You can find out more about the by the Santuario delle Grazie (Shrine of Our Lady of Grace) by clicking here. You can find out more about the Nautilus Shop by clicking here, and can "like" the shop on Facebook by clicking here. The shop is open on Saturdays from 3 until 7 PM or by appointment, and is located at via Cesare Battisti 60 in Modena, Italy

All images are my own, taken at the church. The text is, as indicated, written by the lovely Alessandro Molinengo.

Museo di Anatomia Umana (Museum of Human Anatomy), Pisa: Italy Trip Guest Post by Evan Michelson, TV's "Oddities" and Morbid Anatomy Library

Below, the fourth guest post by Evan Michelson of "Oddities" and the Morbid Anatomy Library documenting our trip through Italy researching the history of the preservation and display of the human corpse. Here, her response to the small but wonderful Museo di Anatomia Umana (Museum of Human Anatomy) of Pisa:

The Museum of Human Anatomy at Pisa is located at the school of medicine and surgery, just a few steps away from the Piazza dei Miracoli which contains the overly-familiar Leaning Tower - a 12th century campanile gone wrong.

The museum collection has an interesting history: Pisa was host to the First Conference of Italian Scientists in 1839 - a somewhat radical gathering uniting scientists from several disciplines. According to our guide, this was a philosophically Positivist convocation that was determined to make sure that science would have an important role to play in a newly unifying Italy. Scientists from the Papal States were not in attendance. Much of the current museum collection was organized for that gathering.

There were several "petrified" preparations in the collection (petrification being an Italian specialty), a fine osteological display, and a nice array of wet preparations. Of particular interest were the full-size flayed human specimens, whose vessels were injected with chalk (an odd method, but confirmed by several sources).

The mummy of Gaetano Arrighi, a convict who died in the early 19th century, seemed to have particular pride of place. His body went unclaimed and he was prepared according to a 19th century Italian recipe, but the results appear quite ancient. I fell in love with a particularly vivid, gesticulating infant in a nearby case, but the mummy certainly did have his charms.

You can find out more about the Museo di Anatomia Umana, Pisa (Museum of Human Anatomy at Pisa) by clicking here. You can read future posts by Evan both on this blog and on her Facebook page, which you will find by clicking here. All images are mine, from the museum.