Carlino 1999

Books of the Body: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999)

quodlibetarian model:

academic theatre, in which someone discourses on a dissection with others watching

title page woodcuts in 15-16c editions of Mondino dei Liuzzi's Anatomie showing dissections: lector (holding book or standing above body, pointing), sector (dissector), ostensor (translating text into vernacular, indicating body parts to sector) and cadaver (12-9)

• prominence of book in lector's hands increases with time
• "scission between the theoretical activity of the physician-anatomist and the practical example directed toward an empirical examination of the cadaver" (19)
• despite text's emphasis on actual dissections, it repeats some mistakes of Galen and Avicenna, showing that "the anatomy lesson ... turns out to be little more than a ritual to celebrate the ancient classical authorities on the subject thruogh a reading of their texts" (20)
• "person of the physician anatomist ... becomes merely a student of texts" and "the dissection of the cadaver by the sector becomes a ritualized exercise void of any significant investigative aim" (20)
• dichotomy between theory and practice

title page of Galen's De anatomicis administrationibus, ParisL Simon de Colines, 1531, shows a change in this model; students rummage in the innards of the cadaver, becoming manually dexterous practitioners of dissection

Vesalius changes this

"By directly observing the cadaver and through his possession of a profound knowledge of earlier anatomical literature, Vesalius was able to confirm, discuss, and correct everything that had been said previously about the different parts of the body. He often entered into open controversy with those who fiercely defended a still vigorous Galenic tradition. His repeated references to dissections he had performed provide what the author himself suggested was the major feature of the Vesalian revolution as later defined by historians. These developments, crucial to both the textual and technical nature of the anatomical discipline, were tied to a series of insights related to the book trade, which make this publishing venture by Vesalius and Oporinus one of the most important and astute successes of the first century of printing. One of Vesalius's greatest merits lay in the fact that he was the first to have understood and exploited this still novel method of expressing and communicating knowledge to its full potential. The publication of the Epitomi, the use of splendid and detailed illustrations as visual aids, the technique of relating text to images, the subdivisions into books, chapters and paragraphs, the illuminated initials that open each of these sections, the title page and portrait of the author -- each of these features was thought out and realized by Vesalius, and his collaborators, as n aspect of the whole enterprise; this kind of integral arrangement had no real precedent in previous publications and conventions and often openly clashed with them. The Fabrica gives a newfound coherence to preexisting material. The so-called Vesalian revolution was probably nothing but a transformation of the forms and ways of using certain tools (dissection and printing, to mention only the most obvious) and of already acquired knowledge." (39-40)

Vesalius's dissections were often private, as opposed to in public demonstrations/theatres

in portrait, Vesalius shown dissecting a woman's hand, with scalpel on one side, and ink/writing implements on the other

16c dissections done on criminal cadavers (92ff.), provided by senator/governors; done during Carnival vacation, when students/public would have time to attend, when it was cold, and when transgressive behavior was permitted (81)

• masses to be said for the anatomized body
• "Even if dissection was to be considered a transgressive and profaning act, it was tolerated because it took place at a time when every form of subversion and inversion was concealed under the guise of performance." (81)

on use of cadavers

• "Their bodies, punished and damned, would continue in their agony even beyond life, since their souls would pay in the hereafter for the sins they had committed." (93)
• preferred victims of hanging, since it preserved their bodies; however "hanging, at least in theory, was reserved for criminals from the lowest classes and for expecially repugnant crimes (the alternative was beheading, which was reserved primarily for the nobility and for persons of rank)." (94)
• "On October 16, 1569, nthe Congregation of Roman Deputies 'over the governance of the Gymnasium' sisued a decree enjoining that public anatomies be conducted 'on the bodies of Jews or other infidels who have been publicly executed.' This injunction supports the hypothesis that the anatomist's scalpel was to be used on the bodies of marginalized, ignoble, and despised people so as to avoid prejudicing, as much as possible, the sentiments of Christian piety and the practice of forgiveness." (95)
• doesn't seem to be connection between type of crime committed and dissection (97)
• usually done on those without relatives nearby to protest (97-8)

statutes were drawn up delimiting how cadavers could be used (e.g., must be buried immediately after dissection; 20 masses should be said for them, extra money from admission going to give alms to the poor in the name of the deceased's soul); but Carlino shows these weren't often followed

"Many of the anatomist's acts, such as the opening and manipulation of the body, or the delaying of burial, were religiously and anthropologically risky. Only a complex system of regulations, strategies, and controls could protect the act of dissection from being sacrilegious and could provide anatomy with an appropriate foundation for a legitimate future without offending any norms of behavior. But, as I have suggested, the conventions regulating the only occasion in which dissection was feasible, the public anatomy lesson, were frequently not respected." (115-6)

persistence of stron gresistance to dissection into the 16c

"the oposition to dissection was not, as has often been maintained, religious in character. It was even less (as far as public opinion was concerned) an epistemological problem, but was rather an anthroological one. The difficulty resided, it would appear, in the contact with the dead and with blood (contrectare) and in the desecration of the corporeal structure, 'brutalize, would, tear to shreds, lacerate' (saevire, vulnera infligere, dilaniare, dilacerare) all of which denote certain types of contact. The anatomist is compared to an executioner (carnifex), and dissection is deemed wicked (turpis), unworthy (indigna), useless (inutilis), cruel (crudelis), and vile (foeda)." (224-5)