Dream Anatomy, an exhibit from the National Library of Medicine. (Gallery of images.) Thanks to scribblingwoman (again!).
It rather takes me back to an MA course I did where we looked at early modern anatomy books… which were frequently virtually pornographic. Well, lascivious anyway, and homoerotic with it. I mean, there were all these young male cadavers in poses that really, really showed off their muscles. Or the boudoir scene, sprawled across a rumpled bed, legs akimbo, in order to illustrate the genitalia in loving detail. (You get those of both men and women; can’t see any in the exhibit.) And the pictures where the cadavers coquettishly show themselves off.
Strangely, I’ve just realised that there’s a real dearth of any links on this subject at EMR. Surprising because this is such a culturally significant topic.
The National Library of Medicine also has Historical Anatomies on the Web, which is a splendid resource with lots of images – a good follow-up to Dream Anatomy. But it only includes anatomical textbooks, and that’s just part of the story. What about Rembrandt’s Anatomy lesson of Dr Tulp? And this is only the most famous of such images.
I have no idea what the early moderns would have thought about plastination; but I suspect that they’d have easily responded to the showmanship of Gunther von Hagen.
And I know you’ll think that I drag crime and punishment into everything, but dissected cadavers were usually, far from being Homeric youths, executed criminals.
Hogarth, of course, knew this.
A few links (more to come, maybe)
Rembrandt’s anatomy lesson (google: ‘anatomy lesson’ + Rembrandt for many more…)
Review of Jonathan Sawday, The body emblazoned (and another)
Resurrecting death: anatomical art in the cabinet of Dr. Frederik Ruysch
I’ve just found an even better resource for images at the National Library of Medicine: Virtua Gateway.
And of course (since it’s back up and running), the Wellcome Trust Medical Photographic Library (which isn’t just photos).
Early Modern Notes 
I know a bit about this one, courtesy of:
http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/a218/
which features a half-decent CD ROM of images and how to study them, some bits of which I wrote. Go on, ask me a question about anatomical fugitive sheets. I dare you.
There are more EM images here at the CDC in Maryland:
http://phil.cdc.gov/Phil/default.asp
And above all, here, at the Wellcome Library. This one rocks, I tell you – nice lightbox feature too, though a bit too slow to use via dial-up.
http://medphoto.wellcome.ac.uk/
Legs akimbo? I’m surprised you don’t have more links, too!
Chris, how do you find EM images at the CDC site? I’m only finding modern photos. Unfortunately I can’t seem to get access to the Wellcome link at the moment; I’ll try again later anyway (Ah, I’ve just discovered that it’s out for the weekend).
Brandon, there may be more links later, but I have a very important book to read for the weekend. And I’ll say legs akimbo if I want to. :oP
Hmmm . . . Look like they’re not there any more. I’m not sure that there were many there in the first place, anyway. In penance, here’s another site with a few on:
http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/dittrick/site2/
But you can’t beat the Wellcome.