Interest in retro medical photography and textbooks

One thing I have always enjoyed since puberty are retro medical textbooks from the 1940s and 1950s - especially ones that have photographs of the patients without clothes. When I was 12-13 and starting to change, I would go to the public library, take one into another section of the library and savor over the black and white photography of the boys and men who would be photographed front, rear and sometimes sideways. That time era has a reputation for being squeaky clean so I find it ironic and exciting to see people from that place in time naked, knowing that they probably went to these medical photo shoots in suits and ties with their shoes polished. The short haircuts, lack of facial hair and the abundance of pubic hair are all things I like to see from that moment in time. I am now noticing with web searches that this type of material is becoming less and less. Where there are links in a search, they tend to go to medical journal websites where you have to be a member to access the material. If anyone else shares my interest, I would love to hear from you.

I try to scope out stuff like this at used book stores and antique stores that have books.

I've collected a few dozen of such medical textbooks, though usually older, from the 1920s/30s and usually published in France. Many are illustrated with etchings or drawings instead of photos, but both usually show patients naked.

I usually left general medical textbooks in the shelves and tended to buy those on gynecology, urology or those with numerous nude images.

An interesting sideline was of pre World War One books published on the physiognomy of humans around the world, from people of different provenance and continents, ethnicities and cultures. They were often lumped under the title of Anthropology of this or that and were in truth mainly excuses to publish photos of naked people, preferably women and make it look pseudo-scientific and therefore respectable for the better class of affluent people.

It is disappointing that libraries dispose of old books. It should be a place for history and reference. Instead they all tell you that they have no room. Throw out the old and only bring in the new. Such a travesty. I guess that is another way of denying history. May it be medical, or historical facts.

The computer has replaced so much of the good old fashioned research that libraries once provided. Unfortunately so much is missing.

It is disappointing that libraries dispose of old books. It should be a place for history and reference. Instead they all tell you that they have no room. Throw out the old and only bring in the new. Such a travesty. I guess that is another way of denying history. May it be medical, or historical facts.

The computer has replaced so much of the good old fashioned research that libraries once provided. Unfortunately so much is missing.

It used to just as bad 50 years ago. That was the time when microfilm was all the fad and libraries massively microfilmed all their newspaper and magazine collections and threw out the originals. It saved a lot on space of course, but there is nothing so horrid as conducting research on microfilm readers. Shitty devices and even those are now completely archaic and no longer of any use.

But in truth, many of the older books just aren't loaned out any more. people have no interest in them. Better to have a public sales or sell them to secondhand book dealers who at least have a chance at selling them to people with a true interest.

And besides, politicians in some places are already doing their utmost to cull libraries of modern day books they don't approve of.

It is disappointing that libraries dispose of old books. It should be a place for history and reference. Instead they all tell you that they have no room.

They don't have room. Libraries are not museums. It doesn't make sense for them to keep books on the shelves that no one ever reads. Globally, there are more than 2.2 million NEW books published each year. They have to constantly curate their collections to meet the needs of their patrons. [/quote]

The computer has replaced so much of the good old fashioned research that libraries once provided. Unfortunately so much is missing.

Yep. It's not perfect. We can't keep everything. But there's so much more information - including both new and old sources - that we just didn't have access to a generation ago. Just look at an example like Google Books. There are 40 million books there. Most of those are resources you couldn't access at all 20 years ago. It's getting better, and technology is an opportunity to improve accessibility of information.