The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is a 1632 oil painting on canvas by Rembrandt housed in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, the Netherlands. The painting is regarded as one of Rembrandt's early masterpieces. In the work, Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is pictured explaining the musculature of the arm to medical professionals. Some of the spectators are various doctors who paid commissions to be included in the painting. The painting is signed in the top-left hand corner "Rembrandt. f[ecit] 1632". This may be the first instance of Rembrandt signing a painting with
Nicolaes Tulp the condition we know as migraine, the devastating effects of tobacco smoking on the lungs, and reveals an understanding of human psychology in a description of the placebo effect. Tulp also discovered the ileocecal valve at the junction of the large and small intestines, still known as Tulp's valve. While Tulp made observations of various diseases, treatment often continued in the age-old way. His description of the symptoms of Beriberi in a Dutch seaman, for example, went unnoticed until the cause (vitamin B1 deficiency) was recognized two hundred years later by Christiaan Eijkman. Partially as a result of the success