Article ID: CBB201497383

Erecting Sex: Hermaphrodites and the Medieval Science of Surgery (2015)

unapi

This essay focuses on “hermaphrodites” and the emerging profession of surgery in thirteenth-and fourteenth-century Europe. During this period, surgeons made novel claims about their authority to regulate sexual difference by surgically “correcting” errant sexual anatomies. Their theories about sex, I argue, drew upon both ancient roots and contemporary conflicts to conceptualize sexual difference in ways that influenced Western Europe for centuries thereafter. I argue that a close examination of medieval surgical texts complicates orthodox narratives in the broader history of sex and sexuality: medieval theorists approached sex in sophisticated and varied manners that belie any simple opposition of modern and premodern paradigms. In addition, because surgical treatments of hermaphrodites in the Middle Ages prefigure in many ways the treatment of atypical sex (a condition now called, controversially, intersex or disorders/differences of sex development) in the modern world, I suggest that the writings of medieval surgeons have the potential to provide new perspectives on our current debates about surgery and sexual difference.

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Authors & Contributors
Crisciani, Chiara
Andrea Bocchi
Sannicandro, Lisa
Radici, Livia
McVaugh, Michael Rogers
Gorski, Richard
Concepts
Medicine
Surgery
Arab/Islamic world, civilization and culture
Mathematics
Alchemy
Manuscripts
Time Periods
13th century
Medieval
14th century
15th century
Renaissance
12th century
Places
Europe
England
Italy
Spain
Russia
France
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