Article ID: CBB001212088

The Instructive Corpse: Dissection, Anatomical Specimens, and Illustration in Early Nineteenth-Century Medical Education (2012)

unapi

Stelmackowich, Cindy Lee (Author)


Spontaneous Generations
Volume: 6
Pages: 50--64


Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Part of a special section, “Visual Representation and Science.”
Language: English

At the turn of the nineteenth century when anatomy and hands-on dissection became the prerequisite for a medical career, the medical community in England and France increasingly relied upon visual representations as part of a complex system of reinforcement of their professional goals. The production of novel illustrated textbooks that disseminated arguments through systematizing illustrations were thus integral to their professional status. Through an examination of a series of realistic diagrams that outlined the new methods of surgical and preservation techniques, this paper argues that visual diagrams were instrumental in supporting the systematic codification and prestige on which nineteenth-century medical knowledge was to depend. It analyses the visual rhetoric and the complex representational languages of these intricate and equally precise illustrations by asking how these illustrations embraced new representational strategies as well as embodied idealizing aesthetic techniques.

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Article Gross, Ari; Louson, Eleanor (2012) Visual Representation and Science: Editors' Introduction. Spontaneous Generations (p. 1). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001212088/

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Authors & Contributors
Tafuri, Domenico
Vaccarezza, Mauro
Fliethmann, Axel
Varotto, Elena
Galassi, Francesco
Weller, Christiane
Concepts
Anatomy
Medicine
Dissection
Visual representation; visual communication
Medical education and teaching
Scientific illustration
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
17th century
16th century
Renaissance
20th century, early
Places
England
Great Britain
France
Florence (Italy)
United States
Spain
Institutions
Royal London Hospital
Reale Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale di Firenze
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