methods

One of the unique innovations made by Grant was to order his Atlas of Anatomy according to the regions of the body. When sorting through the images it quickly became apparent that a system for classifying the drawings would be needed. In developing our system of classification we decided to follow Grant’s method, dividing the drawings into these same regions: the thorax; the abdomen; the pelvis and perineum; the back; the lower limb; the upper limb; the head; the neck; the cranial nerves. Each image in the collection now has a discrete identifying number which will allow researchers to find the image they want and properly reference it.

Initially we estimated the collection to be comprised of 450 images. The process of sorting and numbering the images revealed that 923 images were being held in the drawers of the BMC.

Here is a summary of  the steps we have taken to  transform this collection of images into a usable resource for researchers interested in the history of anatomy, anatomical imaging and medical illustration across the disciplines.

1. The collection of images is stored in drawers at the BMC. Prior to the project, the images were sorted according to medium and techniques used to create the drawing.

2. Our first step was to sort the images into sections, and subsections, corresponding to the order in which they appear in Grant’s Atlas.

3. Next, an identifying system was decided upon.  Each image has been assigned  a unique number that is written in pencil on the back of the drawing. This number acts as a finding aid so that the image can be located in the archive. When the final scans and meta-data system is constructed this number will link the image to the meta-data. link to numbering doc The numbering process revealed that the collection contains over 900 drawings, not the 450 we initially estimated.

4. It is our objective to produce high quality scans of each image for an eventual online archive. Until this process is completed, we have photographed the entire corpus for preliminary use by the members of the Illustrating Medicine research team.