Re: VMs: f52r illustration

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Lee Yang Yang,

At 09:39 09/07/2004 +0800, Lee Yang Yang wrote:
> I'm a medical student from Singapore with a long-standing interest in the 
> VMs. Recently I realized that the root system of the plant featured in 
> f52r resembles an anatomical construct - the arterial circle of Willis. I 
> have uploaded a detail of the roots and the Willis here:
>
> http://img6.photobucket.com/albums/v16/numquaz/willis52.jpg
> http://www.synpulse.com/science/katpres/images/willis.jpg
> http://science.nhmccd.edu/biol/cardio/willis.jpg
>
> Searching the list archives back till 2002, I found that this is one of 
> the few VMs herbs to resist identification by Dana Scott :) The geometry 
> of f52r is highly similar to this arterial system - a loop with four 
> branches on the inferior surface that resemble human "limbs". This might 
> be a significant clue to the subject matter of f52r.

Thanks for this, very interesting! AIUI, there is a lot of debate about the 
accuracy of early anatomical diagrams - for example, one book I read on 
Leonardo contended that some of his famous anatomical drawings were done 
partly from human cadavers, but also partly from dead cows (if we are not 
distracted by the high subjective quality of his rendering style, but 
instead concentrate on the anatomical details).

f52r is one of those unsettling VMs pages - its contents seem clearly 
non-herbal, yet are not obviously symbolic or metaphoric either. The 
quality of your suggested match with the arterial circle of Willis seems 
novel, but perhaps (looking at the details) less persuasive than some of 
Dana's better matches. :-)

FWIW, I think that f52r will turn out to be yet more "crypto-heraldry"... 
with luck. we shall see! :-o

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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