The Anatomical Theater
1993; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 12; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/lm.2011.0253
ISSN1080-6571
Autores Tópico(s)History of Medicine Studies
Resumo^ The Anatomical Theater' Mary G. Winkler The Institute for the Medical Humanities is housed at one end of the second floor of the elliptical, late nineteenth-century building that once housed the entire original medical school of the University of Texas. At the other end of the second floor, conforming to the apsidal shape of the building, is the amphitheater—the old anatomical theater. On the third floor, under a ring of skyUghts that bathe the anatomy lab in the beautiful, clear, changing light of an artist's studio, students carry out the traditions of dissection that were developed in the Renaissance. Tours of the amphitheater are frequent: the room belongs to the history of medicine and exemplifies the excellencies of late Victorian architecture. The anatomy laboratory, however, is locked, its contents guarded with respect. Yet, from time to time, strangers misguidedly wander into the Institute offices and ask, "Is this where they keep the bodies?" Thus, in my workplace today I am able to observe remnants of the disparate elements that have characterized scientific anatomy from its infancy: scientific detachment, aesthetic fascination, and voyeuristic agitation . Harmonizing these elements seems always to have been a challenge . Leonardo da Vinci, whose exquisite drawings belong to the canon of scientific illustration because they express both scientific and humanistic concerns, wrote about the difficulties of dissecting and drawing accurate representations of his observations. He concludes his ruminations on a note that seems gleefully macabre: "And if you should have a love for such things [i.e., drawing from life] you might be prevented by loathing, and if that did not prevent you, you might be deterred by the fear of living in the night hours in the company of those corpses, quartered and flayed and horrible to see."1 Anyone acquainted with illustrations from early anatomy books must recognize their striking peculiarities. Yet, the artists and anatomists * I am very grateful to Inci Bowman, Curator, the Truman G. Blocker, Jr., M.D., History of Medicine Collections, Moody Medical Library, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, for helping me select the frontispieces and plates presented here. Literature and Medicine 12, no. 1 (Spring 1993) 65-80 © 1993 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 66 THE ANATOMICAL THEATER continued to create beauty out of something that was "horrible to see." Contemporary viewers have domesticated these images and made them icons of the history of science; thus, we often fail to acknowledge how truly macabre many of them are.2 In fact, contemporary viewers may read these sixteenth-, seventeenth-, and eighteenth-century woodcuts and engravings with aesthetic pleasure, partly because artist and anatomist collaborated in creating an image of dissection that subsumes any horror of desecration in the drive for ever-increasing knowledge of human nature and human potential. Both anatomical dissection and anatomical illustration evolved in the context of the long struggle of Western culture to harmonize the seeming dichotomies of body and spirit, emotion and reason. The illustrations reflect that struggle. The illustrations that accompany this essay all come from anatomical books in the Blocker Collections of the Moody Medical Library of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. The photographs of frontispieces and plates that follow are not depictions of a forbidden clandestine activity. On the contrary, each in its own way presents an event that is open, dramatic, and even theatrical (see Figures 1 and 2). The illustrations respond to the increase in structures built expressly for anatomical dissection, such as the famous theater at Padua (1594), but they also resemble stage sets in actual playhouses like Andrea Palladio's beautiful Teatro OlÃ-mpico (see Figures 3 and 4).3 Both Palladian and medical theaters pay direct homage to the amphitheaters of the Roman empire. In some illustrations the dissection is staged so as to turn the reader into a spectator or theatergoer (see Figures 5 and 6). Others offer a drama enacted behind a proscenium archlike structure (see Figures 7 and 8). One artist has even included the masks of comedy and tragedy— to make obvious what others have only suggested (see Figure 9). The illustrations mingle ideology, fancy, and fact, but they record an aspect of actual...
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