Public Domain Historical Scientific Illustration

Hobby: Historical Illustrations — take a look

Hello — this is just a hobby. Here are some historical illustrations, free, public domain, for screensavers or printables. (These are super old or else made for the US government, and therefore not copyrightable. ) Click to enlarge, right click to save.

Addendum May 2008: I have my website up and running, yay. Work in progress –

Vintageprintable.com

Addendum: I was fooling with Googlepages, and if you want more free, public domain historical and scientific illustrations, here’s my googlepages (unfinished, but lots of illustrations posted) http://vintageprintable.googlepages.com

Tilesius, Wilhelm Gottlieb, von Tilenau, Ausfuhrliche Beschreibung und Abbildung der beiden sogenannten Stachelschweinmenschen aus der bekannten engelischen Familie Lambert oder the porcupine man. Altenburg, 1802.

“Ichthyosis hystrix (Lambert’s Syndrome), a severe familial skin disorder with scaling and hyperkeratosis, often results in ridges in the skin and is known as porcupine skin. It was first described in 1733 by John Machin who wrote about the case of Edward Lambert, an Englishman who suffered from the disease. Lambert, and his children and grandchildren, traveled through Europe, displaying themselves as “a new species of man” for money. In his work, Tilesius not only discusses Lambert, but also other known cases of the disease. Tilesius was a physician and natural scientist, as well as a skilled artist and expert copperplate engraver. He accompanied research expeditions as a scientist and draftsman and was later a professor at Moscow University.”Courtesy National Library of Medicine

Below are some animal illustrations from early naturalists.