Der zerstuckte Corper: Zur Sozialgeschichte der anatomischen Sektionen in der fruhen Neuzeit (1650-1800) (review)

The history of anatomy has long been a central concern of medical historians. Until recently, it was written as a story of progress that neatly encapsulated a bigger narrative of the triumph of knowledge over superstition and ignorance. The advance of anatomy was, just as obviously, indispensable to the rise of medical science and medical professionalization. More recently, however, social and cultural historians have transformed the history of anatomy by highlighting the many and disparate threads in the anatomical projects of the sixteenth century or by redefining anatomy as spectacle and theater. Karin Stukenbrock presents another variation. Der zerstückte Cörper is a history of anatomy written from the cadaver’s perspective, where the corpse itself rather than the anatomist or his audience takes center stage. All lines of analysis run through, from, and back to the body on a slab. Stukenbrock adroitly portrays the moment when the corpse arrived to be anatomized as almost paradigmatic (rather like an anatomical cockfight) where the many agencies and interest groups involved—magistrates, legal codes, university administrations, medical professors, eager students, poor relief agencies, clergymen, and, of course, the people who became anatomical raw materials—came together.

This is a smart idea, for it permits Stukenbrock to view anatomy in ways that are fresh and informative. She refuses to accept at face value standard interpretations and she presents neither a simple picture of ignorance and abhorrence on one side and the drive for scientific knowledge on the other, nor a titillating but perhaps overblown gothic tale of graverobbers and body-sellers. Even more impressively, she deploys analytically chancy topics, such as social disciplining, with exemplary caution and good sense.

An important moment in her analysis is the procurement or delivery (Ablieferung) of the corpse to the anatomical theater. Although at the beginning of her period, most corpses that found their way under the anatomist’s scalpel and saw were those of executed criminals, the circle of eligibles widened appreciably over time to include unmarried mothers who died in childbirth, illegitimate children (no matter when they died), prisoners, and those receiving poor relief. Some historians would tell this story as a simple one of social disciplining—the fear of being anatomized after death working as a deterrent to crime but also as a stick to beat proper behavior (industry for the poor, chastity for young women) into the heads of the lower orders. Stukenbrock accepts this line of reasoning to a degree, but not slavishly. Social disciplining is only one of a considerably more complex, and persuasive, set of explanations. First, exceptions were the rule and relatives, employers, and the subjects themselves frequently procured dispensations to avoid dissection. Second, a good deal of dissent existed over the issue of suitable subjects. For instance, the Friends of the Poor in Kiel resisted the state’s attempts and professors’ wishes to have paupers delivered for anatomizing, fearing that such would discourage the needy from seeking assistance and thus undermine the whole institution. Third, it was not merely a matter of professors and students howling for bodies and being frustrated in their demands by opponents to a manifestly laudable procedure. Many more bodies were available for delivery than were actually accepted and the reasons for rejection ranged from obvious weather problems (August was a bad month for dissections), unsuitability of certain corpses, and even the lassitude of professors who were not as anxious as often believed to cut into the dead—they, too, felt disgust and abhorrence for the task. Not all professors of medicine were fanatic anatomists or even convinced that anatomy played an essential role in medical education. Finally, it is by no means clear that the state vigorously pursued a program of social disciplining or believed in using post-mortems as a sort of punishment after death. For the state, “disciplining was certainly part of the program, but not necessarily the goal of its...