https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/ An engraved human body where every part carries the story of who figured it out, how, and what they got wrong first. Drag through 3,600 years and watch it being written in. en Mon, 12 Oct 2026 10:36:51 GMT https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/willis-arterial-circle/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w42 Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT The arterial circle at the base of the brain, described in full and given a purpose, with plates by Christopher Wren. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/malpighi-capillaries/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w41 Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Through a microscope, in a frog's lung, the vessels Harvey needed but never saw. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?m=liver-makes-blood https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w40 Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Blood is made continuously in the liver from digested food, flows outwards through the veins and is consumed by the tissues. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/harvey-circulation/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w39 Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Arithmetic kills a thousand-year-old physiology. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=ayurveda https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w38 Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT The image isn't a free-standing anatomical drawing. Its meaning depends on the Sanskrit around it, and the leading study argues they have to be read as one work. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/aselli-lacteals/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w37 Mon, 07 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT A well-fed dog reveals a whole new set of vessels, which Aselli then sends to the wrong organ. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=ayurveda https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w36 Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT The Sanskrit captions are taken from the Bhāvaprakāśa, an Ayurvedic compendium by Bhāvamiśra. Its date is itself uncertain. The catalogue says 1550–1590, and the leading study says around 1650–90. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/fabricius-venous-valves/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w35 Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Fabricius draws the little doors in the veins and gets their purpose backwards. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?m=venous-valves-brake https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w34 Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT The valves of the veins act as brakes on blood flowing outwards from the liver, so it does not pool in the hands and feet. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=ayurveda https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w33 Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Channels run across the torso, carrying the body's fluids between the receptacles. This is the Ayurvedic idea of the body as a network of passages. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/falloppio-uterine-tubes/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w32 Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Falloppio describes the uterine tubes, and corrects his hero Vesalius. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=ayurveda https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w31 Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT The organs on the torso are drawn as receptacles, each holding one of the body's fluids. It is a physiology of containers and flows. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/pulmonary-circulation-europe/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w30 Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT In the 1550s the lung circuit is described again, in Europe, and the argument over who was first begins. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=ayurveda https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w29 Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT The painting was probably a collaboration between an Ayurvedic physician, Tibetan artists and a calligrapher in Kathmandu. The calligrapher may not have known Sanskrit well. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=ayurveda https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w28 Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT A gouache painting of a male body, probably made in Kathmandu around 1800, now in the Wellcome Collection (ref. 574912i). It was exhibited in London in 2017–18. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/vesalius-fabrica/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w27 Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Vesalius shows that much of the anatomy everyone learned came from animals. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?m=two-part-mandible https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w26 Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT The human lower jaw is made of two bones joined at the chin. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/leonardo-aortic-valve/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w25 Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Leonardo worked out how the aortic valve shuts, and almost nobody saw it for centuries. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=chinese-classical https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w24 Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Another 1443 woodcut shows how to locate the "Four Flower" points by measuring the body itself. Proportion stands in for a ruler. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=chinese-classical https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w23 Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Woodcuts dated 1443 from the same tradition set out rules for points that must not be needled, a reminder that the system was practical medicine with safety rules. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/ibn-al-nafis-pulmonary-circulation/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w22 Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT Blood can't seep through the heart's wall, so it must go through the lungs. The manuscript was lost to sight until 1924. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/sliding-filaments/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-otd-sliding-filaments Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT On this day in 1954, Nature printed two papers side by side explaining how muscle contracts. Their authors included two unrelated Huxleys. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/sliding-filaments/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w21 Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT On 22 May 1954, two independent teams explain how muscle shortens: its filaments slide. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=chinese-classical https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w20 Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT In the classical texts the vessels carry qi, and only sometimes blood. This is a model of flow and correspondence, not a pump-and-pipes circulation. That's why Tab. IV is marked Revised. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/ibn-al-haytham-vision/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w19 Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT The eye doesn't shoot out rays. Light from every point of an object enters it. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?m=rete-mirabile https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w18 Mon, 27 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT A network of vessels at the base of the brain, the rete mirabile, refines vital spirit into animal spirit. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=chinese-classical https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w17 Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT The woodcuts trace channels across the body, each named for an organ and a limb: the lung channel of the hand taiyin, the heart-envelope channel, the gallbladder and bladder channels of the foot. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/galen-recurrent-laryngeal/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w16 Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Before an audience in Rome, Galen cuts one nerve and a pig loses its voice. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=chinese-classical https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w15 Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT For teaching and examinations the figure was coated in wax and filled with water. A needle placed on the right point released a drop of fluid. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/galen-arteries-blood/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w14 Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Tie off an artery at both ends, cut it, and look inside. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=chinese-classical https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w13 Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT The court physician Wang Weiyi oversaw the casting of bronze acupuncture figures and the writing of a three-volume illustrated book, completed around 1027. Together they set a national standard for where the channels and points lie. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=islamic-galenic https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w12 Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT The arteries are drawn as a system of their own, separate from the veins, rising from the heart as Galen taught. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/huangdi-circulation-myth/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w11 Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Did Chinese medicine describe the circulation of the blood 2,000 years before Harvey? Not in the way the claim suggests. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?m=septal-pores https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w10 Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Blood seeps from the right to the left side of the heart through invisible pores in the septum. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/sushruta-dissection/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w9 Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT A method for studying the body. Soften it in water, then scrape away one layer at a time. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=islamic-galenic https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w8 Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT The veins are drawn as a separate system. In Galenic anatomy they rise from the liver and carry nourishing blood outwards. Compare the red-ink belief on the modern figure. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=islamic-galenic https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w7 Mon, 09 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT The nerve figure shows nerves arising from the brain and spinal cord, following Galen's account of how sensation and movement are carried. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/herophilus-nerves/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w6 Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT In Alexandria, nerves are told apart from tendons and vessels. Rumours of vivisection follow. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=islamic-galenic https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w5 Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT The first of the five system-figures maps the skeleton. The bones are named and described as a framework. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/alcmaeon-brain-sensation/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w4 Mon, 19 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT The brain, not the heart, is the seat of understanding. But did he really cut open an eye? https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?m=arteries-pneuma https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w3 Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT Followers of Erasistratus held that the arteries carry an air-like pneuma, and that blood appears in a cut artery only because it rushes in from the veins. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/?lens=islamic-galenic https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w2 Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT Written in Persian in Shiraz and dedicated to Pir Muhammad Bahadur, ruler of Fars, this is the first known Islamic anatomical text to illustrate the whole body. The National Library of Medicine holds a copy completed in 1488. https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/tab/edwin-smith-papyrus/ https://tabula-anatomy.netlify.app/today/#2026-w1 Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT A surgeon's case notes name the brain and the membranes around it.