A common object found within medical museums is the developmental series: an arrangement of embryos depicting the transformation of an unremarkable blob into an anatomically organized and recognizable organism. The developmental series depicts a normative process, one where bodies emerge in reliable sequential stages to reveal anatomically perfect beings. Yet a century before the developmental series would become a visual model of embryological development, the very process of development itself was discerned through the comparative study of preserved human fetuses—specifically, those deemed “monstrous” or characterized as “malformations.” This article examines how anatomically diverse fetal bodies were reformulated from singular curiosities into alternative developmental pathways whose characteristics testified to the laws of nature and to the primordial, physical relationship between humans and other species. In early nineteenth century Amsterdam, the father-son team of physicians Gerard and Willem Vrolik built up an internationally renowned anatomical museum famous especially for Willem’s collection of fetal malformations. Physical preparations of fetal malformations play a central role in Willem’s monumental handbook on developmental embryology: comparing human embryos against one another and the embryos of other species, Willem plots out a sequence of embryological development in which a body’s form marks its place within the ever-unfolding natural order. In conversation with the literature on model organisms, this article explores how the “monstrous” gets standardized and, in doing so, contributes to the scientific production of a normative physiological process.
...MoreArticle Brad Bolman (2022) Introduction: What Right? Which Organisms? Why Jobs?. Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 3-13).
Book
Rooy, Laurens de;
Bogaard, Han van den;
(2009)
Verzamelaars van vorm
(/isis/citation/CBB001024398/)
Thesis
Craddock Mossman;
Hannah Fletcher;
(2018)
Fetal Attraction: Human Embryology in the Progressive Era
(/isis/citation/CBB896650427/)
Article
Morel, Marie-France;
(2009)
Iconographie des embryons et des foetus dans les traités d'accouchement et d'anatomie: du XVIème au XVIIIème siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB000933271/)
Article
Shannon K. Withycombe;
(2015)
From Women's Expectations to Scientific Specimens: The Fate of Miscarriage Materials in Nineteenth-Century America
(/isis/citation/CBB599668941/)
Thesis
Nipper Nielsen, S.B.;
(cited 2012)
From the “Workshop of Wonders”: Observing Generation In Danish Medicine, 1650--1800
(/isis/citation/CBB001567415/)
Book
Andrew Bamji;
(2017)
Faces from the Front: Harold Gillies, The Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup and the Origins of Modern Plastic Surgery
(/isis/citation/CBB123455930/)
Article
Jason Bate;
(2020)
Bonds of Kinship and Care: RAMC Photographic Albums and the Making of ‘Other’ Domestic Lives
(/isis/citation/CBB505640130/)
Article
Quinlan, Sean M.;
(2009)
Monstrous Births and Medical Networks: Debates over Forensic Evidence, Generation Theory, and Obstetrical Authority in France, ca. 1780--1815
(/isis/citation/CBB000932589/)
Book
Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy;
(2020)
Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean
(/isis/citation/CBB216430099/)
Article
Anne E Bailey;
(2021)
The Female Condition: Gender and Deformity in High-Medieval Miracle Narratives
(/isis/citation/CBB524481257/)
Book
Suzannah Biernoff;
(2017)
Portraits of Violence: War and the Aesthetics of Disfigurement
(/isis/citation/CBB626555795/)
Book
Arthur MacGregor;
(2019)
Company Curiosities: Nature, Culture and the East India Company, 1600–1874
(/isis/citation/CBB007862581/)
Article
Klemun, Marianne;
(2012)
Live Plants on the Way: Ship, Island, Botanical Garden, Paradise and Container as Systemic Flexible Connected Spaces in Between
(/isis/citation/CBB001210369/)
Article
Lemmers, Alan;
(2013)
Shipworm, Hogbacks and Duck's Arses: The Influence of William May on Sir Robert Seppings
(/isis/citation/CBB001422493/)
Article
Dahlbom, Taika;
(2009)
Matter of Fact: Biographies of Zoological Specimens
(/isis/citation/CBB001022474/)
Article
Floris Solleveld;
(2023)
Language as a Specimen
(/isis/citation/CBB320251226/)
Article
Mascha Hansen;
(2022)
Queen Charlotte's scientific collections and natural history networks
(/isis/citation/CBB932302959/)
Article
Daszkiewicz, Piotr;
Edel, Philippe;
(2014)
The Will of Ludwig Heinrich Bojanus (1776--1827), an Interesting Nineteenth-Century Natural History Document
(/isis/citation/CBB001321134/)
Article
Turner, Gerard L'E.;
(2007)
Standardization of Measurement in Microscopy, 1665--1865
(/isis/citation/CBB000831648/)
Article
Denis, Vincent;
(2015)
Les Parisiens, la police et les numérotages des maisons, du XVIIIe siècle à l'Empire
(/isis/citation/CBB001422232/)
Be the first to comment!