Le cœur mis à nu - continued...

The model for this latter device was an optical tool known since the 1830s as the "phenakisticope" (Plateau) or as "stroboscopic discs" (Stampfer).

As early as in the 1840s, Czermak's teacher Purkyne had used a similar device in order to display physiological knowledge in motion. In Purkyne's eyes, the "phorolyt" was an "apparatus for the graphical representation of movement" allowing to display "most of the movements in the natural and the artificial world (in der Natur- und Kunstwelt)"