Some Yoricks
NPR and others reported last week on the recent staging of “Hamlet” with Jude Law in the title role; Law, ever the Stansilavsky man, requested use of a real skull for the Yorick scene. As NPR explained: Actor Jude Law is appearing in London’s West End as Hamlet, using a real human skull instead of [...]
Some Distinguished Skulls
I’m finally getting around to posting some surreptitious shots of the heads of Johann Spurzheim and Phineas Gage; the museum that houses these fine craniums doesn’t allow photography, so these were taken through clandestine means, thus the poor quality. One thing you don’t get a sense of here is the size of Spurzheim’s head; that [...]
Brick Eaters
Several weeks ago National Geographic reported the discovery of a “vampire” skull, that is, the remnants of a plague victim into whose mouth a brick had been stuffed, a form of postmortem exorcism which would indicate the first remains of a suspected vampire: “as the human stomach decays, it release a dark ‘purge fluid.’ This [...]
