In fact, my biology teacher taught us the importance of drawings over photographs. It was in the mid-90s, so the point wasn't technical limitations. That's bec

In fact, my biology teacher taught us the importance of drawings over photographs. It was in the mid-90s, so the point wasn't technical limitations. That's because a good drawing will show all the important parts but none of the unnecessary details. For example the drawing of a jaw will show every detail of the teeth and bones, but not the background, supports, blemishes and minor damage that are a result of handling and not relevant to the anatomy. We were taught a few techniques for drawing accurate representations, and after a few hours, even me and my abysmal artistic skills managed to do something decent. All that to say that with proper training, people could do incredibly accurate representations of what they saw, most likely better than early day photographs.