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  • Medizin, Geschichte und Geschlecht: Körperhistorische Rekonstruktionen von Identitäten und Differenzen
  • Mary Lindemann
Frank Stahnisch and Florian Steger , eds. Medizin, Geschichte und Geschlecht: Körperhistorische Rekonstruktionen von Identitäten und Differenzen. Geschichte und Philosophie der Medizin, vol. 1. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005. 297 pp. Ill. €49.00 (3-515-8564-5).

Histories of the body and histories of sex seem to be everywhere these days. For some fifteen or so years, a range of scholars have turned their attention to the historical study of the body, usually postulating or accepting that the body is historically, socially, and culturally constructed. Michel Foucault, feminist scholarship, and social historians of medicine have led the way and have been followed by a horde of disciples and epigones drawn from several fields. At first one might think that this collection of essays, edited by Frank Stahnisch and Florian Steger (one trained in medicine and the other in history), merely adds its moiety to an already large oeuvre—and in some ways it does. More importantly, however, it shifts the perspectival ground, goes at the subject from unexpected angles, and recenters medicine—and especially anatomy—in the writing of (body) history. The results sometimes fail to surprise those familiar with the field, or merely nuance what we already know; yet often they radically reposition our point of view on the body and gender, and the role of medicine in shaping both. In their introduction, Stahnisch and Steger argue that medical-historical scholarship needs to be given a more central place in a discussion that has been mostly dominated by cultural history, in order to "indicate perspectives which allow the history of one's own body or the body of the other ('fremder Körper') to appear [more] plastically" (p. 17). These thirteen authors take up the challenge and show how medical knowledge affected and interacted with the social and historical construction of bodies and gender. The dense prose of the introduction does much to obfuscate the real objectives of the volume, and one must labor to dissect out the general themes. But the result repays the effort: the agenda is a stimulating one, and the best articles succeed in standing verities on their heads and making us rethink newly received wisdoms.

The book falls into two parts: the first is devoted to the reconstruction of identity, and the second to the delineation of difference. The first section includes pieces covering, for example, how Greek authors of the archaic period portrayed men and women in their differing relationships to their bodies, how early modern "beauty" books distributed advice and to what end, how the skillfully done anatomical preparations of the eighteenth century responded to deeper cultural assumptions, and how transsexuality presented (and presents) complex physical and cultural difficulties. The second part follows the same chronology, moving from a scrutiny of sexual difference in the Middle Ages, to the study of brain anatomy and nerves over three centuries, to how universities strove to preserve male virility by excluding women, and ending with an analysis of the tangled issues of homosexuality and hermaphroditism.

While the essays do not always cohere well methodologically (some authors seem far more committed to a constructivist program than others, and some articles seem strongly medicalized or even clinical in tone), nor do they faithfully [End Page 655] track the (painfully explicated) logic of the introduction, the theme of gender as affected by medical thinking and medical practice binds them together. The best essays enlighten and even startle with their ability to cast new light on old(er) subjects. Thomas Schnalke's essay on anatomical preparations, for example, obviously deals with a "teaching aid," but is original in focusing on what he calls "spatiality," understanding preparations within the context of how things were thought to be best displayed. Ortrun Riha, in discussing sexual difference in the Middle Ages, takes on the one-sex model and demonstrates that medieval writers on the subject regarded the existence of two sexes as "indisputable" (p. 180). Likewise stimulating and original is Hans-Georg Hofer's handling of neurasthenia (a topic that has perhaps received almost too much attention from scholars) in its subtle separation of the...

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