Jack the Ripper
Rembrandt (1632), Mauritshuis, The Hague.
Rembrandt’s 1632 painting, Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, rekindles interest in a strange and enigmatic character, Jack the Ripper. This bizarre connection, on my part, is purely speculative curiosity.
It was probably no less a dark art, at the time, when it came to learning about the immensely curious human body—a subject of heightened scientific interest. Rembrandt’s painting shows a corpse—a male body, perhaps of an executed criminal. I wonder how long did it take for the scientific community to get hold of a female body. Two centuries?
Jack the Ripper appeared between August and November in 1888, and went on a ripping spree. His victims—all women, different age groups, and les miserables. Everyone of them was ripped with clinical precision, organs missing, and with no evidence of sex, it is as if he was trying to understand the workings of a female body while it was still alive! Shudder the thought if this is how science and knowledge evolved over time.
With unsolved mysteries surrounding the likes of Jack the Ripper, one can only draw personal conclusions—if at all.
ahhh - National library of medicine collection has interesting tidbits. Look at those illustrations.
Oct 11, 07 at 12:27Govind, excellent find, thanks! (I can imagine what it must have been—in those days—to study medicine without good illustrations.)
Oct 13, 07 at 12:34