Making Anatomical Knowledge About Disease in Late Georgian Britain, from Dissection Table to the Printed Book and Beyond : Matthew Baillie's 'Morbid Anatomy' and Its Accompanying Engravings (2019)
The thesis examines the practice of morbid anatomy as it was articulated and developed in late Georgian Britain. This practice, I argue, was a particular way of investigating disease that was specifically anatomical, in contrast to much other work on disease in this period. It originated in William Hunter’s anatomy school at Great Windmill Street, and was developed partly by Hunter himself but especially through the work and publications of Matthew Baillie. At the school, Baillie learnt anatomy in the Hunterian manner, and applied these lessons to the study of disease. His major publications Morbid Anatomy (1793) and A Series of Engravings (1799–1803) clarified and promoted this practice to a wider public in text and image, and were widely circulated. In the nineteenth century, morbid anatomy came to be central to British approaches in the study of disease, distinct from the historiographically much better-known, concurrent developments in Paris. By focusing on morbid anatomy, I argue that Paris’s “birth of the clinic” was part of a wider story which had an important, and distinctive, British component. My interpretation of Baillie’s texts and activities incorporates approaches from the history of medicine, art history, and book history, thereby treating all of the various knowledge-making practices involved as vital to the development of morbid anatomy. Processes of dissection and preservation were designed to gain sensory knowledge of the diseased cadaver, and to keep that knowledge in the form of preparations; features of anatomy books were employed to present disease as anatomical; skilled artisans worked to enhance the epistemic content of Baillie’s morbid anatomy illustrations; and after criticism, Baillie modified his work to mollify his critics whilst restating the essentially anatomical nature of his work. Baillie’s work thus spanned various medical, publishing, and artistic concerns, and I explore morbid anatomy in the same way.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Richard T. Bellis;
(2020)
‘As to the Plan of This Work … We Think Dr. Baillie Has Done Wrong’: Changing the Study of Disease Through Epistemic Genre in Georgian Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB371060031/)
Book
Mitchell, Piers D.;
(2012)
Anatomical Dissection in Enlightenment England and Beyond: Autopsy, Pathology, and Display
(/isis/citation/CBB001251703/)
Chapter
Mitchell, Piers D.;
(2012)
There's More to Dissection than Burke and Hare: Unknowns in the Teaching of Anatomy and Pathology from the Enlightenment to the Early-Twentieth-Century in England
(/isis/citation/CBB001251800/)
Article
Messbarger, Rebecca;
(2013)
The Re-Birth of Venus in Florence's Royal Museum of Physics and Natural History
(/isis/citation/CBB001200290/)
Article
Bertoloni Meli, Domenico;
(2015)
The Rise of Pathological Illustrations: Baillie, Bleuland, and Their Collections
(/isis/citation/CBB001552433/)
Chapter
Guerrini, Anita;
(2012)
The Value of a Dead Body
(/isis/citation/CBB001200748/)
Article
Tinne Claes;
(2018)
‘By What Right does the Scalpel Enter the Pauper’s Corpse?’ Dissections and Consent in Late Nineteenth-Century Belgium
(/isis/citation/CBB316895838/)
Article
Hurren, Elizabeth T.;
(2012)
“Abnormalities and Deformities”: The Dissection and Interment of the Insane Poor, 1832--1929
(/isis/citation/CBB001232194/)
Chapter
Kausmally, Tania;
(2012)
William Hewson and the Craven Street Anatomy School
(/isis/citation/CBB001251804/)
Chapter
Chaplin, Simon;
(2012)
Dissection and Display in Eighteenth-Century London
(/isis/citation/CBB001251806/)
Chapter
Diego Carnevale;
(2020)
Visum et Repertum: Medical Doctrine and Criminal Procedures in France and Naples (17th–18th Centuries)
(/isis/citation/CBB884894838/)
Book
Hurren, Elizabeth T.;
(2012)
Dying for Victorian Medicine: English Anatomy and Its Trade in the Dead Poor, c. 1834--1929
(/isis/citation/CBB001251022/)
Thesis
Knowles, S A;
(cited 2010)
“A Certain Portion of the Whole.” Inspectors, Guardians and Anatomists in East Anglia: 1832--1908
(/isis/citation/CBB001567238/)
Article
Stelmackowich, Cindy;
(2012)
The Instructive Corpse: Dissection, Anatomical Specimens, and Illustration in Early Nineteenth-Century Medical Education
(/isis/citation/CBB001212088/)
Article
Elena Varotto;
Mauro Vaccarezza;
Roberta Ballestriero;
Domenico Tafuri;
Francesco Galassi;
(2019)
The teaching of anatomy throughout the centuries: from Herophilus to plastination and beyond
(/isis/citation/CBB228242848/)
Book
Porter, Roy;
(2001)
Bodies Politic: Disease, Death, and Doctors in Britain, 1650-1900
(/isis/citation/CBB000320356/)
Article
Noyes, Russell, Jr.;
(2011)
The Transformation of Hypochondriasis in British Medicine, 1680--1830
(/isis/citation/CBB001210675/)
Book
Lane, Joan;
(2001)
A Social History of Medicine: Health, Healing, and Disease in England, 1750-1950
(/isis/citation/CBB000410056/)
Book
Helen McCormack;
(2017)
William Hunter and his Eighteenth-Century Cultural Worlds: The Anatomist and the Fine Arts
(/isis/citation/CBB599824501/)
Book
María Dolores Sánchez-Jáuregui;
Mungo Campbell;
Nathan Flis;
(2018)
William Hunter and the Anatomy of the Modern Museum
(/isis/citation/CBB956650771/)
Be the first to comment!