It’s Christmas Eve, and what could be more festive than a thread about illustrations of dissections WITH DOGS IN THEM. So here we go...

First of all is the cover of Vesalius’ 1542 De Humani Corporis Fabrica. The man himself is at the centre dissecting a female body, with some of the big names of Ancient Greece beside him as a huge crowd watches. And there, bottom left, is our first canine observer.

A hand-coloured close up of the dog. He’s a bit funny looking, his back foot looks more like a monkey paw. Thankfully the anatomical illustrations are better.

Next up is The Anatomical Lesson of Professor Pauw from 1615, an engraving by Andries Stock after Jacques de Gheyn II. Pauw was the first anatomy professor of Leiden University, and here we have two dogs!

At the bottom left is this very serious hound...

...while at the right is this greyhound-type dog nervously contemplating some skulls

This is the cover of Bartolomeo Eustachi’s Tabulae Anatomicae. Eustachi was a 16thC anatomist who gave his name to the Eustachian tube of the ear. The engraved plates were completed in 1552, but they were only published in 1714 after their rediscovery in the Vatican library

Here we have a little heap of dogs lying just under the dissection table

The artist of this 15thC painting is unknown, but that little black dog below the table is waiting diligently for anything that might fall...

This is the title page of Reinier de Graf’s 1671 work on the secretions of the pancreas. A dog stands at the front of the composition, while another is curled up in the corner.

This 1610 engraving by Willem Swanenburgh of the Anatomical Theatre at Leiden University shows a cocky pooch strolling in at the bottom left. I particularly like this one, he looks a bit beagle-y.

And finally Hogarth’s Reward of Cruelty from 1751. This shows anatomisation as the punishment for a life lived badly, and under the table where the corpse seems tormented by his dissection, a dog feasts on his what is presumed to be his heart

Here’s a close up of a colourised version where we can see what looks like a very hungry looking dog almost seeming to smile at this bounty received. I wrote about this picture earlier in the year

https://thesewanderingbones.wordpress.com/2020/02/01/the-rewards-of-cruelty/

And to finish, here’s a dog not in a dissection room. This is Maisie, and today marks one year since she came to live with us.