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  2. Neato Old Illustrations : The ancient fMRI machine (of death!)

Neato Old Illustrations : The ancient fMRI machine (of death!)

By omnibrain on July 30, 2007.

I discovered this pretty neat blog via boingboing today (at least that's where I think I found it). This illustration seems to show something that is strangely like an fMRI machine... well with fire instead of magnets, bricks instead of plastic, and smoke instead of a computer analyzing brain images...ohh and instead of the brain images it gives direct insight into the semantic content of the brain.

i-9156c0527a4d487ad94473f1297073dd-DoctorPanurgus++Greuter,+Mathäus+physician+curing+fantasy++bpi1700.org.uk.jpg

Check out the BibliOdyssey blog for many many more great illustrations.

P.S. Click on the picture for a larger version.

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Great illustration. BibiOdyssey id's it as 'Doctor Panurgus', engraved by Martin Droeshout in the first half of the 17th century, after an engraving by Matthaus Greuter from 1600, after a 1596 emblem from the printshop of Theodore de Bry.

By Anonymous (not verified) on 30 Jul 2007 #permalink

Is it just me or is the man on the left with the funnel in his mouth crapping out miniature animals, while the woman in the middle is swinging a squirrel on a leash and another man stands next to her looking rather pleased with himself for having gotten into a picture he has no business being in?

Does anyone have any idea what exactly is supposed to be going on here?

Does anyone have any idea what exactly is supposed to be going on here?

The British Museum seems to be pretty well clued in:

The subject of this extraordinary sheet is perhaps in essence a 'complaint on the times', a satire of universal folly in which a tripartite division of the realm into Cuntry, Citty & the Court is symbolised, respectively, by rude Rusticall being purged by the doctor on the close-stool, spruce master Cittyzsinne standing behind the Doctor, and the Gallant (i.e courtier) whose head is just entering the subliming furnace. But as the young man, prey to multifarious follies and devoted to fashionable fads and fancies, has long been the target of the moralists' especial wrath, and the saeva indignatio of the satirists, the follies of dissolute youth are what I take to be the principal subject of this puzzling sheet which, as Griffiths notes, 'has a complicated ancestry'.

Much more here.