Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection (review)

Katharine Park's book offers a new historical interpretation of dissection by focusing on the anatomy of the female body from the early fourteenth to the sixteenth century in Northern Italy. Chapter 1 explores what Park calls holy anatomies, highlighting the opening of the corpse of the Umbrian abbess, Chiara of Montefalco, by her fellow nuns in 1308. In chapter 2 the author traces the ways in which understandings of "women's secrets" had changed by the late fourteenth century, shifting from an association with women's intimate knowledge of their own bodily processes, to an increasingly medicalized conception of the female body as the ideal object of anatomical dissection because it contained hidden reproductive processes. Chapter 3 emphasizes those anatomies occurring in domestic spaces during the fifteenth century, paying special attention to the autopsy of Fiametta di Donato Adimari — the wife of one of the richest men in Florence — who died in 1477 after having given birth to her seventh child. In chapter 4 readers learn about the multiple investigations of the body of the Bolognese visionary Elena Duglioli in 1520, which involved the participation of medical men in contrast to the female examination of Chiara of Montefalco described in the first chapter. The anatomized body analyzed in chapter 5 is that of an unknown woman: namely, the female criminal executed in Padua around 1541 and portrayed in the center of the elaborate frontispiece of Andreas Vesalius's On the Fabric of the Human Body, first published in 1543.

This richly detailed, chronological account of dissection challenges many previous approaches to, and conclusions about, the practice of anatomy in early modern Italy. Instead of assuming that male bodies were anatomized primarily for the benefit of male medical students, Park finds that, while rare, "holy anatomies" were performed exclusively on female bodies, as part of a religious search for the corporeal signs of holiness considered to be more prevalent in women already identified with interiority. She extends the definition of anatomy to include such practices of bodily opening as embalming, autopsy, and the postmortem removal of the fetus in hopes of baptizing it. The author thereby emphasizes the continuity of anatomical practice from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, and insists on the importance of those female bodies usually overlooked in the literature. In the case of Chiara of Montefalco, it was women who undertook the bodily investigation, apparently drawing on their knowledge of embalming to open the abbess's heart, and look for the signs of the Passion inscribed upon it. According to Park, women not only actively dissected bodies, but were increasingly subject to anatomical interventions once the uterus became the "exemplary object of anatomy" (106).

Another commonplace understanding of early modern anatomies is that they were performed on the bodies of criminals, whose punishment continued beyond their execution to include the public humiliation of the anatomical theater. Park convincingly argues, however, that it was unusual for criminals to be dissected, and that furthermore those dissections done privately were linked with honor rather than shame. The body of Chiara of Montefalco was opened both as a testament to her holiness and in keeping with longstanding religious practices including the worship of relics. Fiametta di Donato Adimari's husband commissioned an autopsy in order to understand why his fertile wife had died. Park contends that this kind of domestic anatomy was conducted almost exclusively on the bodies of young women because of male dynastic interests, which increased along with the attention paid to female reproductive health, and in keeping with the increasing scrutiny of women's bodies before marriage to ensure they would be able to reproduce. Postmortem bodily investigations were informed by a range of motivations and meanings, none of them strictly medical.

Overall, Park's monograph makes an important contribution to current scholarship, and should of interest to historians of medicine, practitioners of women's studies, and...