Physiological Ads for the Modern Self

By Michael Sappol

Fritz Kahn (1888–1968), a German-Jewish physician-author, was the first great exponent of the conceptual medical illustration—illustrations that go beyond the representation of human anatomy to visually explain processes that occur within the human body. His published works, aimed at a mass readership, contain thousands of imaginative images, produced by a cadre of talented commercial artists. In Kahn’s Das Leben des Menschen (5 vols., 1922–31), many of the illustrations copy the look of contem­porary advertisement, with display type, sub­headings, physically attractive models, etc. But they are not intended to sell a product: instead the human body, its structure and functions, are what’s advertised.

That approach was not invented by Kahn and his artists. Anti-tuberculosis, pure food, sani­tary cleanliness and anti-venereal dis­ease cam­paigns before, during and after World War I, were already using tech­niques of adver­tis­ing, with varying degrees of artfulness, in Germany, France, Great Britain, the United States and other coun­tries. But in Kahn’s books lessons on anatomy, physiology, microbiology and path­ology take center-stage without any directly instrumental purpose.

In Der Mensch Gesund und Krank (2 vols., 1939) the figures are mainly given a standard format that no longer permits headline-style display type within the frame of the illustration. This greater design consistency made for a more streamlined modern look. But Kahn never fully embraced consistency in presentation: he and his artists still eclectically borrowed from a variety of advertising design and illustration methods and subjects.

Take for example “The Sensory Organs of the Head,” which uses the encircled face of a beautiful woman to present a lesson on cellular physiology and the senses. The setting is the home (then accounted as “woman’s sphere”). Haloed by a circular band around her head, the female figure resembles a Holly­wood starlet. Within the spotlight, her head is tilted back and lips parted slightly. The pose is ambivalent: Is she overwhelmed, frightened, on the edge of sexual arousal? None of these are particularly relevant to the lesson at hand, but all of them are relevant to the aims of the author and his artist, which is to get the reader to pay attention to the image. The illustration mimics con­tem­porary movie posters, glamor magazines and cosmetics ad­ver­tise­­ments. The glamor girl is bom­bard­ed with the prolife­rating sensual experi­ences of modern­ity. The spe­­cialized sensory re­ceptor cells seem to be shoot­ing out along radiating dashed line-tracks launched from the tech­nolo­gies, com­mod­i­ties and experiences of everyday life. Heat is repre­sen­t­ed by a steam radia­tor; sound by a phono­graph; light an electric lamp; cold a draft coming through an open win­dow. The cells, like futuristic aliens or sur­realist­ic­al­ly distorted spermatozoa, seem to be attacking, pushing to penetrate the protective circle to gain access to the female sub­ject and achieve “the reception of stimuli arising at a distance.”

Everything about “The Sensory Organs of the Head” tells the reader that we are in the modern world, but the aesthetic of the image comes entirely out of commercial advertising, and not modern art.

The convergence of advertising illustration and fine art—the dynamic exchange of stylistic moves and aesthetic principles—is now so familiar to us, so pervasive, as to almost be invisible. We expect such things. But in the 1920s and ‘30s, this was something new and powerful, a way for Kahn, his artists, his readers—and commercial advertisers—to be modern and more modern still. Kahn’s images signify a condition of life and an aspiration: if humanity lived in the modern world of cars, machines, mass media, and proliferating advertisements, then such things were also inside of us. We are modern at the physiological core of embodied existence.

Michael Sappol is a historian in the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine. This blogpost is adapted from Michael Sappol’s new book, How to Get Modern with Scientific Illustration (forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press, 2016)