‘Exactly represented in their proper site’: anatomical flap books digitised online

For the first time a collection of centuries-old ‘lift-the-flap’ anatomy books from the RCP heritage library have been made digitally accessible to our online audiences. You can explore the inner workings of the muscles, brain, pregnant womb, ear and many other parts of the body, and even have a go at making your own anatomical model yourself.

Some of the most remarkable and distinctive items in the RCP heritage library are anatomical flap books: books that reveal the internal structures and organs of the human body by layering up carefully cut-out paper sheets. To date we’ve identified 19 such books in the heritage library: the earliest of them was published in 1559, with examples dating right up into the 20th century. Two of them were displayed in our 2019 exhibition Under the Skin: Anatomy, Art and Identity.

Over the last year we have been working to make a selection of them more accessible to the public through specialist digitisation. With financial support from a match-funding grant from Townsweb Archiving, six volumes containing ten different publications were sent away for digital imaging in a photography lab. Nearly 700 high-resolution images were taken, individually documenting each of the multiple layers in these intricately-made books. Now those images have been uploaded to the RCP heritage library and archive collection on the Internet Archive, making them free to view by audiences worldwide.

The full list of digitised flap books now available spans over 300 years of history, with examples from England, France and Germany. Some are specialist works focusing on a particular organ or bodily system, and others take in the whole of the human form from head to toe. 

Lift-the-flaps images of the entire human body from A Survey of the microcosme (1738)

Lift-the-flaps images of the musculature of the human torso from Myology (1827)

Folding diagram of structures in the brain from Anatomie iconoclastique … encéphale, cerveau, cervelet, bulbe (1873)

Anatomical flap books first appeared on the publishing scene in the early decades of the 16th century. The earliest examples were single-sheet publications, not part of larger books, and surviving examples are sometimes known as ‘fugitive sheets’. They were a way for the mysteries of the human body to be explained to non-specialist audiences, and as well as being educational they would surely also have been as entertaining and amusing then as they still are today. As printing technology developed over the centuries, examples came to be printed in garish colours, and the genre has a resurgence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In an age before X-rays and MRIs, and when access to anatomical knowledge and the dissection of human bodies was very limited, these books gave unprecedented access to the inner workings of the body, letting curious onlookers feel like they were taking the role of the dissector, turning over flap after flap to reveal hidden mysteries. In modern terms, we might say that they were a tool for kinaesthetic learning!

The diagrams could be sold ready-assembled, with all their constituent parts already cut out and pasted together. However, at least one example survives of a book issued with pages intended to be cut up and assembled by buyers themselves, using detailed instructions and their own anatomical knowledge. This was the abbreviated, or ‘epitome’ edition of Andreas Veaslius’ monumental anatomical work De humani corporis fabrica, published in 1543, which contains the parts to make a lift-the-flaps model of both the male and the female body. If you’d like to try that for yourself, download our kit to make your own Vesalian flap anatomy at home. 

Whilst nothing can fully replace the wonder of handling these remarkable original books in person, these digitised versions provide access to them for researchers and the curious who couldn’t otherwise come to the RCP heritage library in London to see them.

Ten titles are included in the new digital collection of anatomical flap books:

• Thomas Geminus, Compendiosa totius anatomiae delineatio, aere exarata (1559)
• Johann Remmelin, Catoptrum microcosmicum : suis aere incisis visionibus splendens, cum historia, et pinace, de nouo prodi (1619)
• Johann Remmelin and Michael Spaher, A Survey of the microcosme, or, The anatomy of the bodies of man and woman : wherein the skin, veins, arteries, nerves, muscles, viscera, bones, and ligaments thereof are accurately delineated, and so disposed by pasting, as that all the parts of the said bodies, both internal and external, are exactly represented in their proper site ; useful for all physicians, surgeons, statuaries, painters, &c. (1738)
• James Hogben, Hogben's anatomical tables illustrative of his treatise on midwifery : intituled Obstetrical studies (1813)
• Edward William Tuson, Myology, illustrated by plates in four parts (1828)
• Gustave-Joseph Witkowski, Anatomie iconoclastique of the brain, larynx and thyroid gland, female genitalia and ear (1873–74)
• Gustave-Joseph Witkowski, A movable atlas of the human body (neck and trunk) showing the positions of the internal organs by means of superposed coloured plates (1880)

Katie Birkwood, rare books and special collections librarian

Suggested related pages:

https://history.rcplondon.ac.uk/exhibitions/under-skin-anatomy-art-and-identity