The Art of Bleeding

We started exploring the rich world of nurse paperbacks a couple posts ago. Now it’s time to get down to the tough questions.  Which “Ward 20″ will you be checking into?

Physically expressing love for your internal organs and all the hard work they do can be a little difficult, what with all the flesh, bone, and muscle between you and the object of your affection. That’s why where the adorable stuffed surrogates come in.  This plush, huggable prostate gland is just one of many delightfully odd [...]

American artist Stephen Shanabrook gives new meaning to the phrase “dark chocolate” with his 2006 piece “On the Road to Heaven Highway to Hell,” an exacting duplicate of the remains of a suicide bomber sculpted in everyone’s favorite confection. Shanabrook, who spent his youth working at a chocolate factory, has previously turned the medium to [...]

Scary hospital clowns, bizarre devices, and cadaver lab pix are just some of the medically themed gems you can turn up while perusing the photos archives of the National Museum of Health & Medicine and the Library of Congress. Violet wand use as physical therapy in military hospital. From the Flickr set of the Otis Historical Archives [...]

Laughing Squid has alerted us to another product from Koken, the manufacturer of the vaguely naughty medical simulation devices previously mentioned in this blog. They write: “We all know getting older isn’t fun, but Koken, a Japanese manufacturer of training gear for medical professionals, wants to be sure you know the specific details. To that end, they’ve produced [...]

Laughing Squid alerted us to this very special lunch tote found on Who Killed Bambi?. While visiting with Bambi, we couldn’t help but notice another anatomically themed treasure — this splendid specimen of skeleton couture designed by Jean Paul Gaultier for Dita von Teese.  

Paperback romance novels about nurses experienced a peculiar popularity throughout the ’60s and ’70s.   Without reading a single example, and without the Women’s Studies degree necessary to painfully belabor the point, it seems safe to say they were glutted with sexist stereotypes and leave the discussion of content there.  It’s more fun to judge [...]

Last night Art of Bleeding “medical staff” attended a overnight event sponsored by the Boyle Heights Paranormal Project at the abandoned Linda Vista Hospital. I did not stay for the overnight portion, so I have yet to hear if remaining staff was spirited away by ghosts.  However, I had an interesting experience driving the ambulance [...]

Laughingsquid.com has posted the latest episode of Art of Bleeding “Anatomy Minutes,” writing: A parody of the scratchy old educational films used to sedate students of a bygone era, this latest from The Art of Bleeding — the second in the “Anatomy Minutes” series — quickly acquaints you with those most mouthwatering glands in the human body….

Don’t scream. I know, I know — it looks like the nightmare creation of some shambling scarecrow who stole your pillows and stitched them into a “wife” and “kids” out in the barn. Either that or really messed up designer pillows. Sadly, it’s neither.  What this really represents is the 18th-century answer to Yesterday’s post — an [...]