“Making Visible Embryos” (review)

“Making Visible Embryos” is an admirable 15,000-word/120-image Web exhibition exploring the history of visible iconographies of embryos. The exhibit spans 250 years of European and American technical innovations. The pictures and models reveal and represent iconic images from a diversity of sources: manuals, handbooks, textbooks, scientific and medical research, newspapers, magazines, and Web sites. These communicate “attitudes to childbirth, evolution and reproduction” which became “dominant representations of pregnancy and prominent symbols of hope and fear.”

Sections include material on imaging technologies, social and cultural institutions and practices, historically significant organizations, and issues of cultural and social significance. The section “Unborn” considers early modern representations of the womb’s contents and medical, legal, and theological interests in pregnancy and ensoulment as well as the status of monsters. “Development” and “Learning” orient viewers to the history of embryology, focusing on visual aspects. “Evolution” considers Ernst Haeckel’s notorious recapitulationist imagery for his nineteenth-century evolutionary embryology. Several sections, especially “Remodeling,” articulate Hopwood’s long-standing research theme of the visual representation and embodiment (in 3D models) of development in serial stages and normal plates, discussing both scientific leaders and technical artisans as well as the public reception and uses of models and images in museums, hospitals, and schools. Sections on “Monitoring” and “Intervention” focus on mid-twentieth century, mainly American themes and invite viewers to consider provocative and difficult topical questions, such as how imaging technologies like ultrasound have positioned many “visible embryos” to compete for cultural awareness rather than one definitive one: images may serve as first baby pictures for the family album or as calls to protest on antiabortionist placards and as material and data for laboratory science. The exhibit invites reflection on the ways images, and those imaged, slip between object and subject and asks viewers to consider what s/he is viewing: is it child? fetus? abortus? embryo? art?

“Making Visible Embryos” considers important moments and monuments in the visual history and material culture of embryology, from Hunter’s and Soemmerring’s multi-image stage representations of development as a process, to Haeckel’s representations of evolutionary recapitulation, to His’s microtome sections and Ziegler’s wax models, to Keibel’s normal plates and Mall’s Carnegie Department of Embryology, and finally to imaging technologies such as radiography, ultrasound, and fMRI. Certain facts familiar to scholars might help orient novices better if they appeared earlier in the exhibit. For example, that Germany and (to some extent) England were primary sites of embryological research until the twentieth century and only then did the concentration of effort shift to the United States is mentioned only on page s6, two-thirds of the way through. Likewise, lay viewers might gain the impression that the evidence for evolution was entirely discredited due to Haeckel’s notorious “fraudulent” images, though this is but one episode in the complex history of evolution post-Darwin. Finally, the exhibit displays a marked shift of tone around page s5_1 in its (and embryology’s) consideration of women. In the first half, exhibit text reflects the science’s seeming treatment of women as bodily objects—mysterious vessels of the unborn—while the second half shifts toward regarding women as individual subjects and patients. These are problems bound to arise since the author-curators avoid overwhelming their powerful selection of images with too many words, citations, and scholarly apparatus; yet scholars will wish for more historical context than this thoughtful and well-crafted exhibit could provide. Some lay viewers may be frustrated by the largely inaccessible (i.e., non-English) literature cited. It can only be hoped that more scholars of this caliber will be inspired to make the data and findings of history of science and medicine broadly and publicly accessible.

The ten roughly chronological sections are well organized, written in an accessible style, and balanced between education, entertainment, and scholarship. Pages are static but visually appealing and easy to navigate. A banner indicating chronology adjacent to the navigation bar would improve viewer...