Chubby Cherubs

By Holly Tucker

Kids, I've told you a million times...Quit Dissecting the Dog!

I came across this image quite by accident today in the extraordinary Wellcome Library image collection. I've been working on some descriptions of early-modern dissections for my book manuscript--and was having a hard time putting into words the tools that anatomists used in their work: their size, shape, and use. Often when I'm stuck, I dip into my favorite arsenals of images to reawaken my creative juices.

It was only after I had flipped through a good hundred images or so that I realized: I'm too jaded. What an odd life it is when you can scan illustrations that are hundreds of years old and think "seen that," "been there," "done that" as you hit enter.

And then, just when I was thinking that nothing surprises me anymore: the putti magically appeared.

Putti (putto in the singular) are what those portly little babies are called. While they are regular features in Renaissance religious art, they show up from time to time as well in later scientific, and especially, medical illustrations.

One of my putti favorites has to be the frontispiece to Regnier de Graaf's De mulierum organis generationi inservientibus (1672), which announced the discovery of the human egg. (Spermatazoa were discovered in 1677--see post on Little Men in Sperm and The Chicken or the Egg).

The putti in the bottom left-hand portion of the illustration have just dissected a hare. They have put its ovaries on a tray and are looking at it close-up through a telescope-like device. Behind them stands a statuesque figure who holds a hand-drawn image of the female reproductive system.

But for as much as the Regnier image is eye-catching (and figures prominently on the cover of one of my books), I have to say that this new set of putti amuse and mesmerize me while also creeping me out in no small measure.

Related posts:

Gross Anatomy

Realism in Dissection

Dissection of Syphilis Patients

Anatomy of a Teaching Gig

Image: Etching by Bernard Picart, 1729. Wellcome Library, London.

The Knife Man

By Holly Tucker

Coming up next week is a guest post from Wendy Hunter, who will be talking about 18th century domestic violence, in conjunction with her new book Wedlock. I came across Wendy's fabulous work about a year ago, when I read her The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery.

THE KNIFE MAN is a biography of the 18th century John Hunter, who is often referred to as the "Father of Surgery." The book has been praised far and wide for its spot-on presentations of what early dissection classrooms and surgical theaters would have been like several hundred years ago. I, for one, will never be able to visit Covent Garden in London again without scanning the buildings in search of the exact space where the Hunter brothers performed their countless dissections. Wendy's chilling chapter on the negotiations that happened in prisons with family members of the soon to be hanged is well worth the read.

As regular Wonders and Marvels readers know, the website's pages are frequently home to inquiries about early surgery. If your nerves are steadied and you're not prone to queasiness, head over to the surgery articles grouped HERE.

And for those who can't get enough of this gory stuff, may I also recommend:

Dream Anatomy, an online exhibit at the National Library of Medicine

Morbid Anatomy, a magnificent and smart website on historical anatomies

Realism in Dissection

by Mary Coleman (Vanderbilt University)

During the scientific revolution and particularly the 17th century, anatomical dissections and representations took on a new element of "realism." Dutch anatomist Govard Bidloo's 1689 anatomical manual, Anatomia Humani Corporis, and the controversy surrounding its illustrations highlight the manner in which such realism was a product of the times.

The manual's hauntingly precise illustrations, drawn by Dutch artist Gerard de Lairesse, were central to the success of the work and proved so in later allegations of plagiarism. When William Cowper published an anatomical manual in 1698 using the same plates drawn by de Lairesse, he gave no credit to the artist or the anatomist. Although Cowper wrote an entirely original English text to accompany the plates, his status as a plagiarist remains. Author and historian William Cobb considers the importance of illustrations in 17th century medical publishing: "Precise anatomical descriptions were a key part of the scientific revolution's attempt to provide a material account of the universe" (163).

Why were such illustrations so imperative to the livelihood of 17th century anatomists? The invention and development of the microscope in the Netherlands during the early 17th century brought medical and public attention to the uncharted realm of minute structures. With the enhanced observational power of the microscope, realism and even hyperrealism became vital to the success of anatomical illustration. During the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, the Netherlands really was the center of scientific and artistic innovation, producing such celebrated artists as realist painter Jan Vermeer and Rembrandt, certainly a master draftsman. During this "golden" era, distinguished artists and scientists mingled in the universities and public spheres.

Medical education during the century increasingly included observation of dissection in "anatomical theatres." Professors performed dissections while dictating anatomical lessons to students, and public dissections were put on display for a fee. As interested parties became well versed in the drama of dissection and anatomical macro-structure, anatomists were pressed to deliver cutting-edge observations with precision.

Govard Bidloo's text and the controversy surrounding its publication demonstrate the beginnings of an emphasis on exacting observation that continues today in medical experimentation.

Image: Gerard de Lairesse, "Structure of Head" (1685).

Bidloo, Govard. Anatomia Humani Corporis, 1685.

Gross Anatomy

This one goes out to all of the first-year medical and nursing students I know. The Dittrick Medical History Center at Case Western has an online exhibit on the history of gross anatomy classes--Haunting Images: Photography, Dissection and Medical Students. Just know that you're not alone as you memorize ever single, solitary, teeny-tiny anatomical structure imaginable. You're part of a very long history.

For those who can't get enough of this gross stuff, you might head over to the Morbid Anatomy website. It's a smart, well-researched site by someone who knows her stuff. And I thought that I had some peculiar interests!

Dissections in 19th-century Vienna

From this month's Bulletin of the History of Medicine:

• a book review of Douglas Biow's Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity. Maybe that will help me understand why we have this thing for handwashing in our family, and why it's so horrifying to me when people don't wash their hands with soap in public restrooms.

• And Buklijas's "Cultures of Death and Politics of Corpse Supply: Anatomy in Vienna, 1848-1914." It was a buyers market for bodies in nineteenth-century Austria? WHO KNEW!

The abstract for the more morbid among among us:

"Nineteenth-century Vienna is well known to medical historians as a leading center of medical research and education, offering easy access to patients and corpses to students from all over the world. The author seeks to explain how this enviable supply of cadavers was achieved, why it provoked so little opposition at a time when Britain and the United States saw widespread protests against dissection, and how it was threatened from mid-century onward. To understand permissive Viennese attitudes, we need to place them in a longue durée history of death and dissection and to pay close attention to the city’s political geography as it was transformed into a major imperial capital. The tolerant stance of the Roman Catholic Church, strong links to Southern Europe, and the weak position of individuals in the absolutist state all contributed to an idiosyncratic anatomical culture. But as the fame of the Vienna medical school peaked in the later 1800s, the increased demand created by rising numbers of students combined with intensified interdisciplinary competition to produce a shortfall that professors found increasingly difficult to meet. Around 1900, new religious groups and mass political parties challenged long-standing anatomical practice by refusing to supply cadavers and making dissection into an instrument of political struggle. This study of the material preconditions for anatomy at one of Europe’s most influential medical schools provides a contrast to the dominant Anglo-American histories of death and dissection."

Anatomy of a Teaching Gig

I love my job. I came to Vanderbilt about 13 years ago as a newly minted Ph.D. I get to teach achingly bright students really cool things.

I've had a chance to follow my curiosity wherever it takes me. Here' s one place where it has landed...

This week in my History of Medicine Course: Anatomy and Dissection! Early illustration plates are a wonder, and a marvel, to behold. Take a peek at this early one from Jacopo da Carpi, ca. 1450- ca. 1530 from the Wellcome Institute Image Archive.

As this early plate suggests, anatomy in the early sixteenth century was in its nascent years. Andreas Vesalius's De Fabric was still several decades away. Most of the earliest anatomy manuals were derived from animal dissections--rather than human dissection. When Vesalius hit the scene around 1643, human anatomy would be catapulted into prime time. The anatomist not only used real human cadavers (usually pulled from the gallows, or freshly dug up at cemetaries); he made sure the world knew that he performed the dissections himself. Usually this gruesome task was reserved for the lowest-man on the medical totem pole: the barber-surgeon.

For more on the history of anatomy, complete with some amazing illustrations: take a peek at the National Library of Medicine's magnificient exhibit, Dream Anatomy.

Lost Wax

In this month's Lancet, there's an interesting article by Richard Barnett (Wellcome Institute), "Lost Wax: Medicine and Spectacle in the Enlightenment." The Lancet 2008; 372:366-367

Abstract: The mid-18th century, anyone walking along London's Fleet Street towards Temple Bar—a ceremonial gateway marking the boundary between the City of London and Westminster—would have passed Benjamin Rackstrow's Museum of Anatomy and Curiosities. Rackstrow specialised in wax models of the human reproductive system, and visitors to his museum were shown case after case of distended wombs, syphilitic genitalia, and a selection of preserved and bottled fetuses. But his pièce de résistance was a wax sculpture of a pregnant woman, partially dissected, with claret running through glass tubes representing the circulation of her blood. Rackstrow's lucrative enterprise points to an overlooked strand in the history of medicine, one which lies on the uneasy boundary between medicine and spectacle, education and titillation.