#victorian surgeon

[foursaints]

barty's inscrutability is so funny just because its like. he's winning the repression olympics without even realizing by wrapping his true self away in endless untraversable turns like a conch shell. having a situationship with him is like volunteering to lock yourself in the torture labyrinth bro you are never making it out of there!! you will spend years trying to unravel his feelings and get absolutely nowhere but still constantly feel like you’re on the verge of getting there!!! (reg lived this #survivor)

but just imagine finally meeting the ONE (1) person who has ever managed to lock barty down. and it’s this tiny utterly demented blonde who dresses in lumpy estate sale cardigans and always smells a little bit like formaldehyde and mothballs and the inside of a hearse. he has the thousand-yard-stare and pop culture references of a feral child raised by coyotes because he didn’t have a single interaction with someone his own age (besides his equally strange sister) until he was like 17. he’ll cut you with zero hesitation 🔪. he's the most autistic person youve ever met in your entire life and whenever Notoriously Unattainable™️ Barty Crouch looks at him he’s like please evan let me lay down to be the ground under your feet so you never have to touch the earth again only me forever PLEASE

#for the record i think evan conceals his crush better but he is just as obsessed ok. #he has one of those like hand-sewn victorian surgeon's dolls with the removable organs he got at a flea market. #but he keeps it on his desk and silently pets its hair and pretends it's barty. #pandora walks in on him once and he’s like WHAT. YOU SAW NOTHING. NO YOURE WEIRD!!!!!!!! #t #yeah. #rose & thorn #evan meta tag

[anatomical-puppet]

i love reading a book that immediately alters my brain chemistry in a profound way

#started the spirit bares its teeth by andrew joseph white and ohhhhh my god. #protagonist is an autistic trans guy who wants to be a surgeon in victorian england. why are you me!!!!! #all the supernatural elements are also so so cool arhrgrgvrgrg #i havent read in so long im glad im getting back into it #puppet rambles

[vh-ras]

[oc] dr. gore

#oc: conway #digital art #original art #original character #oc #surgeon #19th century #victorian oc #(if you havent guessed from the prev tags hes a surgeon from 1875) #hes a little cray #thats his whole deal

[faeriegirl]

A doodle of a new oc -- Alfred

#ocs #doodles #alfred #design concept #alfred is based on the character of bloodborne with the same name but w a twist #he is in essence a victorian era surgeon motivated by bloodlust and his love of his god #he is on the cutting edge of medical practice #but his experiments are less than ethical to say the least #he is well loved in his community and an old schoolmate of jon #tho jon finds him repulsive...

[just-an-enby-lemon]

I get Jack you're repressed and depressed now quit your job and stop being a dick.

#sad repressed bi boy keeps being being mean to his pacients #renfield is my baby and any attack to him is personal #victorian prick #jack seward #he is my favorite characther? hell no #but I'm studying him like he does reinfield #because he is unwell and interesting as heck and also a disaster and is fun #except he is being an ableist dick and i'm a casual media analyst #dracula #also is amazing how seward almost almost gets to theorizing about sazonal depression a real thing that they didn't really knew at the time #he almost almost gets it and instead goes to magic sun and more ableistic bs #also jack is genuinally a good general practicioner and surgeon specially for his time #but instead he is fucking people up and honestly also ruining his own mental health at an asylum #he could be saving numerous lifes and instead he is making everyone's lifes around his work place including his worse #please seward just fucking quit #he is a shit neurologist a shittier psychiatrist and I don't even consider him a psychologist just quit man please go do surgeries and exams

[synelven]

hot milfs in your area are committing evil surgery !!!

#i have no idea what crimes bond villains do so ive just decided that dr vasilevsky does medical crimes #oc: dr vasilevsky #artists on tumblr #oc art #original character #cw gore #digital art #westilevsky #i gave her an apron and a modern version of those cool half sleeves that victorian surgeons used #because she is Not covering her fit with one of those ugly ass surgical gowns just for the sake of hygeine #and yes she wears reading glasses and yes if agent west ever found out about that she would not let it go !!!!! #she's holding like a liver or something idk

[eurydice-cant-spell]

stim board for the play I'm writing - finished the first draft last night :)) (its a rom-com about victorian Scottish lesbians called frances and violet - frances is a surgeon and violet is a quack/patent medicine sales woman and they are lovely and bumbling in their romancing).

#lovely obscure stimuli as ever #victorian era #romcom #new writing #theatre #queer theatre #lesbians #lovely confident and simultaneously awkward and messy lesbians #Victorian surgeons #also Robert Liston is a main character #fascinating fellow Robert “fastest knife in the west end” liston

[toomanyassassins]

I'm reading an old book on Victorian Surgical Practices and asfdgklajs the phrase "received the contents of a loaded gun" is now my new favorite way to say somebody got shot 😆

#history #victorian era #victorian surgeons #research #the book is Facts and observations in medicine and surgery by john grantham in case u r wondering

[artbyfrosty]

Watched a video about hospitals in Victorian London and apparently there was this surgeon, Robert Liston, who was absolutely SHREDDED and would hunt down patients who were too afraid of the operation and TACKLE them to bring them back the operation room??? He would also exclaim "Time me, Gentlemen!" At the beginning of an operation, as he was the fastest surgeon around lmao

So all that created an image in my head I just HAD to draw lol

#sketch #drawing #art #my art #sketchbook #ink #figure drawing #victorian #surgeon #medicine #character design

[cogentranting]

Jack Dawkins is so blorbo shaped. Very character!

He's an incredible surgeon. He's a master thief. He's a Victorian orphan. He's in love with the governor's daughter. He's a feminist. Hes dyslexic. He's got abandonment issues. He was in the navy. He's great with a sword. He hates Oliver Twist. He's a gambler. He's being entrapped by his father figure. He performs secret surgeries to save people and revolutionize medicine.

#the artful dodger #jack dawkins

[foursaints]

just saw a guy on youtube that has a pet mold and feeds it strawberries and my microbiologist and pandora-like self was juste like: why haven’t i done that before

a crucial part of evan rosier's insanity to me is that despite APPEARING completely emotionless, he actually does have feelings (albeit strange ones) that he channels into the most bizarre coping mechanisms. and yet he's convinced he's normal.

when he had a crush on barty, he would name anything & everything after him. that frog that he's dissecting? he's calling it Barty and talking to it like it's him. his brain preserved in a jar on his desk? that's barty junior now and he takes extra special care to make sure it's resting nicely. he probably had a creepy little patchwork doll that he dressed like barty & talked to while blushing a bit.

anyway this means pandora has probably walked in on evan confessing his feelings to her jar of pet mold that she keeps under her bed

#my best friend in high school did this!! and he was grounded when his mom found his pet mold #a #rose & thorn #Evan meta tag #<- that's MY fucked up autistic victorian surgeon medical malpractice waif

[thebibi]

Sucking Gangrene Out of a Wound

So last year, there was this feeling of incredulousness about Van Helsing's little story about how Jack saved his life! People had heard of sucking poison out of a wound, but actual gangrene? Jack must have used medical equipment right? He didn't actually use his mouth, RIGHT??

Unfortunately for all of you lovely readers, not only didJack suck the "gangrenous blood" from Van Helsing using his mouth , but its very likely Bram Stoker really did mean it in earnest! Because SCIENCE. Those sciencifically minded bros were SO OPEN MINDED!!

I had the unfortunate displeasure of reading excerpts from this book on Victorian medical history, about all the ways doctors and surgeons had to be incredibly quick thinking and open minded as to not, y'know, kill their patients. One of the famous examples given is of Eric Erichsen, chief surgeon at London's University College Hospital, who used his mouth to suck out infectious blockage from a woman's throat. Yup you heard that right! HIS MOUTH.

Literally, a woman came in for surgery because she had a blocked larynx, most likely laryngitis that had gone on way too long. And during surgery Erichsen realized even though he cut through her throat, the offending material was difficult to get out. So he just used his God give mouth and OH MY GOD GROSS. Anyway, she survived the operation??? He died when he was 78 so this operation didn't impact his health AT ALL??? Yeah.

So anway....yeah. Do I think Bram Stoker knew of this case? No, although three of his brothers were medical doctors. People have also suggested Thornley Stoker was the direct inspiration for Van Helsing because of implied spoilers. But I think he had heard of enough similar tales of surgery gone wrong that it doesn't seem too out of place.

Of course that's not even touching the thematic and symbolic importance of blood sucking in a novel all about Blood Sucking....Either way, yes it would have been entirely possible for Jack to really save Van Helsing's life from succumbing to gangrene. Everyone say Thank You Jack!

#dracula (novel) #victorian history #medical history #jack seward #john seward #abraham van helsing #gangrene #thebibi on vampirez

[vh-ras]

decided to refine an older (maybe like a month or so? not old but not incredibly recent) doodle of oc ...... i really like the pencil brush

#digital art #original art #original character #oc #oc: conway #surgeon oc #my art #should i tag victorian...? #hands kind of fucked up in the fullbody but Bleuhghh i dont care

[marzipanandminutiae]

I'm pulling you back onstage, what's this about the dangers of white lead makeup being known already at the time it was used?

They were!

Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo, writing in 1598. For anyone who's struggling with the typeface (spelling preserved):

OF CERUSSE, AND THE EFFECTS thereof. The Ceruse, or white lead, which women use to better their complexion, is made of lead and vineger; which mixture is naturally a great drier; and is used by the Chirugions [surgeons] to drie up moiste sores. So that those women which use it about their faces, doe quickly become withered and gray-headed, because this doth so mightely drie up the naturall moysture of their flesh. And if any give not credite to my reporte; let them but observe such as have used it, and I doubt not but they will easily bee satisfied.

That's putting it mildly- ceruse could also cause skin peeling, hair loss, paralysis, seizures, organ damage, a host of other symptoms, and even death. But still, they were at least aware that it was Not GoodTM, and it's possible other sources I haven't read more accurately stress the gravity of the danger. Certainly it was known to be deadly by the 18th century, when the death of 27-year-old socialite Maria Gunning, Countess of Coventry was ascribed to her alleged use thereof. (I've never seen proof of this, and it's important to remember that as an Irishwoman, she may have faced undue hostility in English high society- and had very light skin naturally).

It's also difficult to trace just how popular ceruse even was, because less harmful forms of white face paint and powder also existed. One could speculate that this woman or that used ceruse, but nobody did a survey of such things. It was definitely real- cosmetic white lead tablets have been found dating as far back as ancient Greece -but whether it was the Sephora foundation of its day or the BBL (ie a dangerous beauty aid that a few devotees turned to but most eschewed) cannot truly be known.

By the 19th century, ceruse makeup had passed completely out of use as far as I know. Its legend grew as a cautionary tale on the dangers of vanity; the "fact" that Queen Elizabeth I used it was repeated over and over until it became common- if totally unsupported -knowledge. They had arsenic complexion wafers in the latter half of the 1800s- although one brand much advertised in the US was tested by contemporary scientists and found to be mostly lactose with only tiny amounts of arsenic or none at all, so cost-cutting entrepreneurs may have accidentally prevented illness or death. IF the wafers were popular at all, which once again remains unknown- certainly few letters and diaries I'm aware of mention them, if any.

(Interestingly, there's an echo of Maria Gunning's legend in Victorian newspaper stories about socialites "enameling," or applying a plaster-like layer of semi-permanent toxic makeup to their faces. Enameling was alleged to be undetectible but It's Definitely There; Trust Us; A Friend Of A Friend Of Alva Vanderbilt's Cousin's Underbutler Said, etc. This is similarly lacking in any solid evidence; recipes for a product called "enamel" do exist in period texts, but it always seems to be more akin to liquid foundation today, and I've personally only seen one such preparation containing lead. Many even included zinc oxide, which might have provided some unintentional SPF.)

#ask #sorcerorvaati #history #fashion history #makeup #renaissance fashion #I DID find a recipe for theatrical greasepaint with asbestos in it from 1893 which. YikesTM

[disacurveball]

As one of the 2019 ineffable bureaucracy shippers, writer of “Crowley is Raphael” fics in 2019, and someone with a special interest on Victorian surgeons, I truly won this season.

#I am winning all around right now #just finished the season last night #good omens #good omens spoilers #ineffable bureaucracy

[azfellandco]

Hi friend this ask is a request for you to wax lyrical about Crowley slowly dying of a poisonous dose of laudanum, because it seems That Scene is still on all our minds. <3

Godbless (they said agnostically). This is going to be a mess of a response because I have been working a lot of overtime and am pretty sleep deprived, and also because there are a lot of angles to this.

First off: you're so correct to point out that laudanum is an analgesic and not literally a poison, because I think this slots in so nicely with the pattern of stuff we see Aziraphale consume and why (food and wine, for sensual pleasure) and stuff we see Crowley consume and why (alcohol for numbing and six shots of espresso to brace himself, and now laudanum, a medical grade numbing agent, at a dosage that would have killed Elspeth had he not intervened).

To really get into this I'm going to have to talk a little about something I have a lot of approximate knowledge about: Victorian era medicine. Why I find poison sexy (maybe compelling is a better word here) is partially tied up in the Victorian era and this exact subset of knowledge, which I am going to disclaim right now as not very precise. I research stuff primarily to regurgitate it in fiction, and not for complete factual accuracy.

First off, let's take a moment to admire Crowley's prognosticative abilities once again.

Antiseptic is 25 years off, germ theory is held in disdain by the western world, but here's Anthony "that went down like a lead balloon" Crowley just trying to be helpful to this guy covered in blood.

Antiseptic was not in common medical and surgical use until the 1850s. It was pioneered by Joseph Lister, who actually worked at the University of Edinburgh, which was kind of the place to be in terms of medical breakthroughs of this time period. Before the advent of washing your hands and sterilizing surgical equipment, something like 2/3rds of surgical patients died either on the operating table or of infection afterwards. Medicine during this time period was difficult, dangerous work with a high risk of complications, and surgery was haunted by death and disease. Dr. Darymple would have administered laudanum to a patient and then strapped their limbs down and put something in their mouth so they didn't bite through their tongue before cutting into them, and even if he was a good surgeon they might have died a week later from gangrene or sepsis anyway.

It's in this world that laudanum and opium more generally got romanticized by literature and poetry. The Victorians loved opium, but the symbolism of the poppy, from which opium is derived, has been sleep and death since the classical world. My go-to example of the blending of these themes (poppies as sleep and death symbolism and this time period's interest in the classical world) is The Garden of Proserpine by Algernon Charles Swinburne, of which I will include an excerpt below:

No growth of moor or coppice,          No heather-flower or vine, But bloomless buds of poppies,          Green grapes of Proserpine, Pale beds of blowing rushes Where no leaf blooms or blushes Save this whereout she crushes          For dead men deadly wine.

The symbolic connection between opium (and thus laudanum) and sleep and death is my strongest association with either drug. The poppies = death association is used all the time even in the modern day. See this song, Flowers, from the musical Hadestown:

Lily white and poppy red I trembled when he laid me out "You won't feel a thing," he said, "When you go down" Nothing gonna wake you up now

Poppy symbolism is doing a lot of work in this song, actually, drawing a line between virginity and death, and the flower imagery standing in for both Euridyce's sexual relationship with Hades as well as her death but I disgress.

This is my personal context for laudanum and opium. I think it's encouraged to read the sleep and death connection into both of these medicines, both by the artistic tradition that arose contemporaneously with their use and by continued references back to it in the modern day. I am thinking of the scene in Inception where the opium den they visit is full of people who go to be drugged in order to dream their lives away as just one of many other modern day examples. Opium is sleep and sleep is death.

So while the laudanum is not literally poison, I think there is cultural context in which it is possible to read it as symbolically poison, regardless of whether Crowley's not-actually-human body should be able to withstand it. I think that it is compelling to read it as such, given the above-mentioned pattern of Crowley's habits of consumption.

I've seen a lot of posts about how the next time Aziraphale and Crowley see each other after this flashback is the time Crowley asks Aziraphale to bring him holy water and Aziraphale refuses on the grounds that he won't provide Crowley with a suicide pill. While I think this says more about Aziraphale than it does about Crowley (Crowley has never struck me, by behavior or attitude, to be the kind of person who would kill themself, whereas for Aziraphale one of the worst things that could happen would be losing Crowley) there is something there, something in that tartan thermos, something in the idea that Crowley would drink his death.

There is one more angle to this, and this is going to be a bit of a reach. I once read an analysis post in another fandom about the symbolism of poison as a choice of weapon. This line will haunt me until my grave: "a man stabs, a woman poisons". Just as a sword is a phallic symbol, poison (to me) is a feminine coded way to kill another person. For more context, please read The Laboratory by Robert Browning, a poem about a woman procuring a poison to kill her husband's lover, written by another Victorian poet. Crowley dying being discorporated by self-administered poison compels me for all the reasons mentioned above but also for gender reasons. Nonbinary icon.

Crowley dying being discorporated by self-administered poison feels like it is in conversation with two events that happen chronologically later but narratively earlier: the "suicide pill" conversation and Crowley trying to wait out the apocalypse in the bar after the bookshop burned. For all intents and purposes he seems to have given up at that point and only pulls himself together because Aziraphale appears to him and proves he isn't gone gone. It makes sense as an exploration of Aziraphale's anxieties (the suicide pill convo), and the extent to which they might be justified (Crowley drinking as the world ends). It's interesting it's compelling it's symbolically rich it's consistent with characterization choices in the show.

I think realistically Crowley would keep from Aziraphale that he was in pain until he physically couldn't do so, because it would threaten the wall they've had to erect to keep each other safe to do otherwise, but in a scenario where Crowley was hurt, properly hurt, Aziraphale would find a way to excuse them because he would not stand for Crowley suffering.

Just...

The idea of Aziraphale gathering Crowley close in the dark graveyard, feeling him stumble, Crowley who is so bright and brave and beautiful reduced to clutching to Aziraphale and the pair of them trying to will him back to health the way they can choose to sober up, and failing... Crowley because by this point he's too weak, he waited too long putting up a front for Aziraphale, Aziraphale because of conflicting magic or because he's too anxious, his own personal moment of the gun shaking in Crowley's hands during the bullet catch, where he knows what he has to do but he can't do it, can't trust himself not to make it worse.

And then Crowley's body going cold, Aziraphale holding it and crying because despite knowing it's just a body and that Crowley can get another one, he failed to protect him. Crowley died for someone and Aziraphale couldn't prevent it. And the things they don't say to each other, all rushing in to fill the silence left by Crowley's stopped breath. Aziraphale whispering to him, kissing his temple, part of him wondering if he'd ever be able to do this if he wasn't already gone.

It would just be really good, okay. It would be really good.

#the resurrectionist #good omens #meta #i stayed up way too late to write this and now i am going to sleep #tw suicide #tw death