AUZOUX CLASTIC ANATOMICAL MODEL

A 19½ x 10 x 5 in. polychrome hand-painted papier mâché and plaster model depicting a bovine uterus complete with cervix, uterine horns, ovaries, and oviducts, cut-away revealing outer portion of placenta and placentome network, hinged panel in main uterine wall opening to reveal inside of placenta with placentomes, housing a bovine embryo at four months gestation, embryo with detachable umbilical cord. 

See Price List of Physician's Supplies. Chas. Truax & Co., Manufacturers, Jobbers, and Importers of Surgical Instruments... Chicago: Truax & Co., 1890

Dr. Louis Thomas Jérôme Azoux began producing accurate papier mâché anatomical models while a medical student in Paris during the early 19th century. Developed in response to the frequent lack in availability of cadavers for human dissections, his models, unlike real corpses, could be "dissected" over and over again. The term "clastic" comes from the Greek "To break," and Auzoux models could be "broken" open and taken apart to reveal the finer interior anatomical structures. Auzoux was able to secure funding from the French state to found a factory to produce his anatomical, and later veterinary models, and he soon became a commercial success, with his models in high demand by universities, secondary schools, and hospitals around the globe.