The first book on the Mütter Museum contain artful images of the museum's fascinating exhibits shot by contemporary fine art photographers. Here, the focus is on the museum’s archive of rare historic photographs, most of which have never been seen by the public.

Featured are poignant, aesthetically accomplished works ranging from Civil War photographs showing injury and recovery, to the ravages of diseases not yet conquered in the 19th century, to pathological anomalies, to psychological disorders. Many were taken by talented photographers between the 1860s and the 1940s as records for physicians to share among colleagues and to track patients’ conditions, and demonstrate various techniques used in medical photography including the daguerreotype, micrography, X ray, and traditional portrait-style photography.

As visual documents of what humans endured in the face of l

imited medical knowledge, these extraordinary and haunting photographs demonstrate how far medicine has advanced.

Author: College of Physicians of Philadelphia
Editor: Laura Lindgren
Publisher: Blast Books
Pages: 224pp
Size: 9.5 x 11 x 1
Notes: hardcover, full color
Release Date: November 28, 2007
ISBN: 978-0922233281