Medicinal Tattooing?
In the early 1990s, a 1000-year-old female mummy was found at Chiribaya Alta, southern Peru, with two distinct kinds of tattoos on her body. On her hands, arm and lower leg were birds, apes, reptiles and other symbols, while her neck was covered with an asymmetric pattern of twelve overlapping circles. When the tattoos were analysed using microscopy and spectroscopy, something strange was found. Most ancient tattoo inks were made of ashes and soot, and the tattoos on the mummy’s arms and legs reflected this—but the circle tattoos on her neck also contained burnt plant material. “If you use different materials, [the tattoos] have different functions,” says Maria Anna Pabst from the Medical University of Graz, Austria. While the ash and soot tattoos were decorative, the plant material suggests that the neck tattoos would have been part of a healing or strengthening ritual. The plants were most likely chosen for medicinal properties, and the circles were positioned on the mummy’s neck close to Chinese acupuncture points, so the tattooing process might have been akin to acupuncture, designed to relieve neck pain or relax the subject. This isn’t the first time we’ve suspected tattooing was used for therapeutic purposes—the oldest European mummy, Ötzi the Iceman, also has tattoos on his back and legs close to acupuncture points.
How interesting!
(via scinerds)
Tugging on my heart strings…..
This is the chordae tendenae. They are connected to the bottom of the hearts valves and help pull them closed.
Peter Carrington
Peter Carrington, an illustrator from Manchester, makes artworks about science, natural history and his struggle to gain knowledge. As Carrington states,
“I’ve always had an interest in science and nature, and during my studies I decided to combine this with my practice. Through deeper research into different scientific areas it quickly became apparent that, due to having dyslexia, I was never going to get a grip of the topics to make work that wasn’t shallow and ill-informed. I became frustrated that I wouldn’t be able to use the visual language of the sciences that I had become obsessed with. It was at this point that this frustration became the forefront of the work and the drawings became a portrait of me and my struggle with dyslexia. I began using the visuals of science and natural history journals to create seemingly scientific illustrations.”
Carrington’s work harkens back to the history of biology and botany, where drawing and labels were the key to all knowledge, then he adds his own bit of mystical influence. Now Carrington is focusing on the human need for order. Through labels and numbers he demonstrates our need to categorize. To see more of his work, click here.
I know I normally post human-biology oriented art, but this was so lovely I had to share. After all, we people are part of the ecosystem. :)
Hemorrhages involving the basal ganglia area (the putamen in particular) tend to be non-traumatic and caused by hypertension, which damages and weakens the small penetrating arteries. A mass effect with midline shift, often with secondary edema, may lead to herniation.
I JUST SAW THIS SLIDE IN LECTURE TODAY
talk about comprehensive!
“Right and left coronary arteries, emerging from the origin of the aorta, veins of the heart and coronary sinus.” illustration by J. M. Bourgery from Atlas of Human Anatomy and Surgery / Atlas d’antomie Humaine et de Chirurgie by Jean Marc Bourgery (1797-1849) Los Angeles: Taschen, 2005. Atlas Case QM 25 .B67 2005
A normal heart rhythm is called normal sinus rhythm (NSR for short). An NSR will have a heart rate (this is the same as the pulse) between 50 and 100 beats per minute and a normal impulse formation from the SA node ( P wave). In the absence of any abnormalities, a completely normal rhythm will also have a normal PR interval (interval from the beginning of the P wave to the beginning of the QRS of .12-.20 seconds), a normal QRS width (time it takes for the ventricles to contract of .04-.10 seconds), a normal QT interval (interval from the beginning of the QRS to the beginning of the T wave of .30-.46 seconds). Also, all the waveforms must be of a normal shape with no ST changes.
Learning this very soon! :)
Top Airports for Spreading Germs ID’ed
An infectious disease that really wants to go global would do well boarding planes at JFK or LAX, according to a new computer simulation that ranks U.S. airports by their potential to kick-start an epidemic.
The simulation could help public health officials decide how and where to allocate resources such as vaccinations in the early days of an outbreak, says Ruben Juanes of MIT, who describes the analysis online July 19 in PLOS ONE.
If you can’t tell already, I love infographics. What a good one, PTSD is in need of greater recognition and treatment for those who have it.
(Source: nurse-on-duty, via scinerds)
(Source: avoiding-thefreshman15, via fyeahanatomy)
