Is this woman the subject of a bizarre experiment? Is this a sort of torture? Is this man using a robot to extract something from her throat?
This is actually an image from a Bell Laboratories ad from Life magazine in 1947. This technician is using an elaborate apparatus to film this woman’s vocal chords. This does not look comfortable! It reminds me of the scene from Ghostbusters when Venkman hooked people up to electric shock equipment to test ESP. Haven’t seen it? It’s worth a look. Even if you have seen it, it’s worth seeing again.
Will people in the future look back at our sophisticated scientific apparatus and laugh at how crude and barbaric it is? I can’t even begin to imagine. Considering how much that picture makes me cringe, however, I’m guessing that they will.
So, what kind of images did they get? Here is an example of footage taken by Bell Labs.
The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum in Copenhagen features a number of Greek and Roman portrait busts and statues. These are very fragile and a number of them ended up with broken noses. In the 19th century there was a restoration trend, where museums attempted to restore classical art. New noses were fashioned out of marble or plaster and affixed to the statues to make them whole. In the 20th century, this idea was revisited and they decided that the works should be shown in their natural state, brokenness and all.
Diagram Lajard derivative work: Hic et nunc (Nasothek.JPG) [Public Domain, CC0], via Wikimedia CommonsDuring this “de-restoration,” a strange collection of noses and other parts was assembled. Rather than throw them away they were used to create a new piece of art called Nasothek. The purpose of the exhibit is to call to mind the sins of artistic curators of the past so that we may never be tempted to do such a thing again.
One might wish that Steven Spielberg or George Lucas had been given the opportunity to see this monument before they were tempted to revise their own art.
Steve Spielberg infamously used CGI to replace any appearance of a gun in E. T. with a walkie-talkie (Kids, that’s a device used to communicate by radio before everyone had a mobile phone). Spielberg ultimately admitted regret for this decision.
George Lucas made numerous alterations to his Star Wars films, but the most notorious was the “Han shot first” controversy. This is where the later release of Star Wars was altered to make it look as though Han Solo shot a bounty hunter in self defense rather than preemptively. Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca in the the films, settled the matter once and for all by posting a picture from his shooting script on Facebook. Lucas also saw the light and released the original edit in 2006.
No matter what your art, Nasothek is a reminder that art can and should stand on its own. Imperfections or politically incorrect elements cannot be washed away without wiping the original purpose of the art. We have some of the weirdest art in the land for sale at the Lucky Lizard. We wouldn’t change a bit of it.
It’s a shame that some inventions never caught on. Imagine how stylish flying would have been if the Hoop-Skirt parachute idea, described in the January 1911 edition of Popular Mechanics, had caught on. It’s possible that the manly men at the time balked at the idea of being seen in something that could at any time resemble a skirt. It’s also possible that the idea didn’t really work and they would simply plummet to their death… leaving a good-looking corpse.
Portable library, 1920s style
Another idea in the early 20th century was the first book killer. Long before gadgets like computer tablets, inventors already had their sights set on fixing the problem of carrying around cumbersome books. The June 1922 edition of Scientific American shows one solution. The Fiske Reading Machine printed books in tiny print and provided a modified magnifying glass that you could hold up to your eye to read. One can only imagine how this would work on a bumpy carriage ride.
It’s easy to laugh at these things now, but you never know how the next great thing will appear. It might seem like the famous Inside the Egg Egg Scrambler by Ronco. It might end up being sliced bread.
Think that egg scrambler idea is dead? You haven’t been watching Kickstarter. People will do just anything to avoid cleaning that fork and bowl!
Punishment? No! Cure! This cage was a 1909 treatment for Arteriosclerosis. Click the picture for the article in a 1909 science magazine.
There may be a reason why what doctors do is called “practice.” While medicine has become a more rigorous science over time, the history of medicine is filled with things that would have you swear that people were just making things up.
The picture shows a man in a cage. It’s not some sort of medieval torture, it’s a device that was designed to treat Arteriosclerosis. The cage is attached to some electrical equipment that would make Victor Von Frankenstein proud.
Of course, while we laugh at some of these crazy medical practices of the past, we may not be much better today. In the far future will people look with horror on how we used radiation and chemicals to battle disease? Will what we see as the most sophisticated and compassionate medical techniques look like poking holes in people’s skulls with a rock to let out the bad spirits?
Here’s a video featuring 10 of the most bizarre medical practices in history.
Is this woman the subject of a bizarre experiment? Is this a sort of torture? Is this man using a robot to extract something from her throat?
