f77v top nymphs

[-JKP-]

Cassiopeia occupies one of the most prominent locations in the Milky Way belt. And Galaxy mythology links it to a stream of animal milk. Just to say, the teats and streams of white liquid are very appropriate to Cassiopeia. 

This doesn't exclude an anatomical reference though, since I hold that these images are explicitly layered by design. My real objection is, as I wrote in my latest blog post, that the specific organs as they are evoked here, do not correspond at all to the way medievals thought about these organs. We recognize them because exposure to modern medical diagrams has engrained specific shapes in our mind of the carefully isolated, idealized organ. 

I have not been able to find an early 15th century depiction of the ovaries or uterus yet in which the horizontal properties are emphasized like this. Or anything close to our modern image of these organs, which the VM structure resembles. If such an early 15thC  (or earlier) image were found, it would provide some basis for the organic theory.

I agree, I very much suspect the images are layered by design and I think the central figure quite possibly could represent Cassiopeia.


But the ancients were not ignorant of anatomy, only human anatomy. Dissecting humans was taboo (just as shooting a Christian with a crossbow was taboo, or studying geomancy was taboo), but there were no prohibitions on dissecting dogs, and every butcher in every marketplace knew all the basic organs because they "dissected" animals every day.

People in the Middle Ages did have whacky ideas about how organs were connected, about how fluids were composed, about how they flowed (they were wrong about blood flow and, as mentioned, some believed that milk flowed from the uterus to the breasts). They were wrong about "humors", and confused about what happened during pregnancy, but they did know the basic parts. Many people bought their meat live in the markets, walked them home, and butchered them themselves. Some of the medical schools dissected animals as part of the course-work.