This has taken too long to be animated, but finally Henning Lederer did it: Fitz Kahns’ Man As Industrial Palast (animated).

For thousands of years human beings have used metaphors as ways of understanding the body. We talk about our ‘ear drums’, or our ‘mind’s eye’. When we are in love we say our hearts are ‘bursting’ or ‘broken’. When we are nervous we say we have ‘butterflies in our stomach’. When we are impatient we have ‘itchy feet’. These familiar images help to explain the unfamiliar and to comprehend the complexity of our bodies.

The image above, by the artist Fritz Kahn, shows the nervous system as a complex electronic signalling system, complete with buttons, charts and busy workers. Fritz Kahn’s books and illustrations explored the inner machinery of the human body, using metaphors of modern industrial life. Kahn turned the brain into a complex factory with light projectors, conveyor belts, secretaries and cinema screens; he showed the journeys of blood cells as locomotives encircling the globe; and he compared bones to modern building materials such as reinforced concrete.

Industrial Palace website.