Auzoux’s models

(Image: Rod Start/Museum Victoria)

"She stares blankly across the room. Her Roman nose and clown-like mouth look freakish amidst the rivers of blue veins that run along her face.

The face I'm peering at belongs to a 150-year-old life-sized anatomical model, created entirely from papier-mâché. She’s currently housed in the Melbourne Museum in Victoria, Australia.

Her muscle threads, tiny capillaries and wiry bronchioles were meticulously forged by French physician and anatomist Louis Thomas Jerôme Auzoux in the 1840s.

As a medical student in the early 19th century, Auzoux was frustrated by the poor dissection models that were available. Wax figures quickly deteriorated and human cadavers were hard to come by. So he began experimenting with paper and glue."
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