[Please note! The Art Bin is more or less discontinued. You cannot subscribe. Maybe some day there will be a concluding issue ...]

Imagery from the history of medicine
27 images from the history of illustrated medicine, mostly anatomy, from medieval diagrammatic depictions of humans in the frog-like positions typical of that time to the medical books of the 1800's with paper intestines on foldable flaps.
 A series of images in the Gallery See the pictures!

  Why a health issue? Isn't The Art Bin a cultural magazine?

Special section on "new diagnoses" etc.:

A life redirected: The story of an illness
"As I woke up one morning in May 1993, everything changed. Life changed. It would turn out, this was a day of the kind that constitutes a demarcation. Everything that had happened in my life would from then on be categorized by if it had occurred before or after that particular date. Life took a new direction." The Art Bin editor tells his story, of nine years of illness with fibromyalgia, probably caused by mercury poisoning from dental amalgam.
 Article by Karl-Erik Tallmo Read more! (Also available as PDF)

Consensus and canaries: About medical science and its loyalties
This long article is a sequel to "A life redirected". Here The Art Bin editor scrutinizes medical practice as well as scientific research. Many doctors regard illnesses they can't understand as psychosomatic, illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome. Scientific research regarding the hazards of, for instance, tobacco, toxic chemicals, dental amalgam or mobile phones has been and is being manipulated, attacked or concealed, often with the help of scientists who secretly work as consultants for the very industry branch that has a direct interest in a certain result of their research. An essential question here is whether newspapers should report new research findings about possible health risks, even if the so-called scientific community has not yet reached consensus about it, something that often may take decades.
 Article by Karl-Erik Tallmo Read more! (Also available as PDF)

A hundred and fifty years of misuse of mercury and dental amalgam — still a lesson to learn
Dental amalgam is the main source of mercury exposure to humans in the western world. However, experts from health authorities have stated that those amounts are far less than what is obtained from food. This is false. Already in 1882 the evaporation of mercury from amalgam was demonstrated. Mercury, evaporating from the fillings after chewing can in many persons exceed industrially permissible levels.
 Article by Mats Hanson Read more!

Open wide — a report from the shadowlands of amalgam poisoning
"We had now come to the point where I could rule out all illnesses that are checked for in the Swedish health care system. Now there were no more tests left to be performed. But I was still just as sick!"
 By Ulla Hilding & Mauritz Sahlin (from the book "Open wide") Read more!

Somatic medicine abuses psychiatry — and neglects causal research
"As a psychiatrist, I have to say it is rather distressing to witness how unconcernedly certain colleagues are abusing psychiatry, allowing other interests than those of the patients to take precedence [...] the starting-point is an embarrassingly simple misunderstanding. If the somatic doctors feel that they cannot find any explanation or accepted diagnosis in a given case, this certainly does not mean that the causes must necessarily be psychological."
 Article by Per Dalén Read more!

Fluoride in dentistry is a cell poison
Fluoride is good for your teeth and reduces caries. So we have been told by campaigners for decades. But the opponents of fluoridation claim that fluoride is a poison, even affecting our nervous system. Today fluoride rinsing is on its way back in schools — while more and more countries put more and more serious warning labels on their fluoride toothpaste packages. So, what are we to believe — is fluoride beneficial or dangerous?
 Article by Jan Sällström Read more!

Documents and older source texts:

Modern Miracle Men
Dr. Charles Northen, who builds health from the ground up
The alarming fact is that foods — fruits and vegetables and grains — now being raised on millions of acres of land that no longer contains enough of certain needed minerals, are starving us — no matter how much of them we eat!
 Article by Rex Beach; US Senate document No 264, 1936 Read more!

The chemistry and physiological action of mercury as used in amalgam fillings
From that time onward the use of amalgam has increased, until now tons are consumed yearly in filling teeth. Dr. Harris, in his opening address to the first class of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, in 1840, says: "It is one of the most objectionable articles for filling teeth that can be employed, and yet from the wonderful virtues ascribed to this pernicious compound by those who used it, thousands were induced to try its efficacy".
 Article by E.S. Talbot, 1882 Read more!

Injurious effects of mercury as used in dentistry
Is it not a necessary consequence that amalgam fillings, which, as I have proved, are constantly giving off mercury fumes to be inhaled into the lungs, not a few times daily, but always, without cessation day or night, is it not a necessary consequence that in many sensitive persons such fillings must produce deleterious effects?
 Article by E.S. Talbot, 1883 Read more!

Amalgam and kindred poisons
"Those persons who have ... amalgam fillings in their teeth, frequently suffer from mercurial rheumatism and other symptoms of that poison; in fact, some are walking barometers, and by their pain can foretell a change of weather."
 Article by H. Sheffield, 1896 Read more!

Existe-il un tremblement mercuriel?
French neurologist Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893) was a popular celebrity doctor, who taught Sigmund Freud hypnosis. Would it not be a myth that mercury could cause tremor, Charcot asks in this lecture. The mercurial tremor would quite simply be hysterical, belonging to neuroses.
 Lecture by J. M. Charcot, 1892 (in French with English commentary) Read more!

Advertisement for the services of "dental artist" J. F. Darmstädter, 1736
"He repairs all Teeth, may they be black or yellow, in a moment, so that one is quite amazed, and he preserves the teeth, so that they will stay sound and solid throughout their lifetime; since there is nothing mor gallant in a Man, nor better, than having a clean mouth; and contrary, nothing more evil than when a Man has bad and yellow teeth, which furthermore causes bad smell when in honette Conversation."
 Facsimiles and transcript in Swedish, with English commentary Read more!

On the natural faculties
"I call the motion of the vein and of the muscle an activity, and that of the food and the bones a symptom or affection, since the first group undergoes alteration and the second group is merely transported."
 By Galen Read more!

The Hippocratic oath and law
"I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation - to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation."
 By "Hippocrates" Read more!

On ancient medicine
"For the art of Medicine would not have been invented at first, nor would it have been made a subject of investigation (for there would have been no need of it), if when men are indisposed, the same food and other articles of regimen which they eat and drink when in good health were proper for them, and if no others were preferable to these. But now necessity itself made medicine to be sought out and discovered by men, since the same things when administered to the sick, which agreed with them when in good health, neither did nor do agree with them."
 By "Hippocrates" Read more!

On regimen in acute diseases
"In these diseases you may use a yellow wine, and a dark austere wine for the following purposes: if there be no heaviness of the head, nor delirium, nor stoppage of the expectoration, nor retention of the urine, and if the alvine discharges be more loose and like scrapings than usual, in such cases a change from a white wine to such as I have mentioned, might be very proper. "
 By "Hippocrates" Read more!

... and don't forget Kisamor!
Already back in 1995 The Art Bin presented a whole section with documents concerning the female naturale healer Kisamor, who lived 1788-1842. Here are 28 letters and prescriptions as facsimiles as well as a biographical article.

Help

Art Bin people:
At The Art Bin you can read texts about or by the following people: Jean le Rond d' Alembert, Harry Amster, Anders Andersson, Oskar Andersson, Guillaume Apollinaire, Jane Austen, Ingeborg Bachmann, Francis Bacon, Rex Beach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Moshe Benarroch, Anders Berglund, George Berkeley, Ambrose Bierce, Jean-Luc Bitton, Emmanuel Bove, N.I. Bukharin, Edmund Burke, Jean Martin Charcot, Geoffrey Chaucer, Paulo da Costa, Per Dalén, Jeffrey Dane, Johann Friederich Darmstädter, Dwight Decker, Condesa de Dia, Betty Ehrenborg-Posse, Peter Ejewall, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Uno Eng, Friedrich Engels, Eric Ericson, Björn Ericsson, Falstaff fakir, Lars Fredriksson, Galenos, Erik Gustaf Geijer, Philip Glass, Mats Hanson, Lafcadio Hearn, Linda Hedendahl, Hans Werner Henze, Mary Herbert, Christer Hermansson, Ulla Hilding, Hippokrates, Peter Holmlund, David Hume, William B. Hunt, Philip Hyams, Per Jadéus, Alexander Jartsev, James Joyce, Kisamor, Mati Klarwein, Max Klinger, John Labovitz, Archibald Lampman, Mats Larsson, Kurd Lasswitz, Lawa, Arthur Lee, J. Lehmus, Doris Lessing, Robert Lietz, György Ligeti, Gunnar Lindstedt, Conny C. Lindström, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Mao Zedong , Karl Marx, Merete Mazzarella, John Stuart Mill, Christian Morgenstern, Paul Murry, Jakob Nielsen, Charles Northen, Novalis, Julia Kristina Nyberg, Ben Ohmart, Bettie Page, Gudrun Persson, Hans-Gunnar Peterson, G. V. Plekhanov, Francis Poulenc, Raymond Queneau, William Ray, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Rainer Maria Rilke, Pehr Rudin, John Ruskin, Mauritz Sahlin, Berit Sahlström, Jens August Schade, Marie Selander, H. Sheffield, Germund Silvegren, Elsa Sjöholm, Adam Smith, Josef Stalin, Paula Stenström, Georg Stiernhielm, Alfred Stock, Tony Strobl, Jonathan Swift, Jan Sällström, E.S. Talbot, H. D Thoreau, Eduardo S. Tingatinga, H.G. Wells, Eudora Welty, Per Wennerstrand, Fredric Wertham, Per-Axel Wiktorsson, Iannis Xenakis, William Butler Yeats ...

ISSN: 1401-2979.  Editor and designer: Karl-Erik Tallmo, (send e-mail).
About The Art Bin, editorial policies etc.