Anatomies: De Vésale au Virtuel ed. by Vincent Barras (review)

Celebrations of the five-hundred-year anniversary of the birth of the famous anatomist Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564) come, like all births, with risks. An overly romanticized figure, Vesalius has materialized in hagiographic and triumphalist terms as the father of modern anatomy, ushering in a new age of scientific discovery and truth. His birth has been used as the occasion to render the science of anatomy as a necessary and “natural” development—despite substantial evidence to the contrary. Successfully avoiding such risks, Anatomies: De Vésale au Virtuel provides a visually compelling and informative reflection on the historical, conceptual, and ethical issues raised by the study of human anatomy. It uses Vesalius as a window into the visual worlds of anatomy, with their overlapping iconographies; their branches to other descriptive, visual sciences; and their pedagogical functions in medical institutions.

This slim volume accompanied the exhibition, “Anatomies. De Vésale au virtuel,” which was held in honor of Vesalius’ birthday in 2014 at the Musée de la main, UNIL-CHUV, in Lausanne at the Institute and Museum of Anatomy at the University of Bâle. These essays highlight the different purposes of anatomical study and the concerns it has raised: as a series of discoveries about the mysteries of the body and nature, as a philosophical inquiry into the nature of growth, as a way of organizing the conditions of the body’s intelligibility and coordinating the techniques of the observer (to borrow a phrase from Jonathan Crary), and as a meditation on the ethical responsibilities for the management of the living and the dead. Historically persistent, these concerns continue to animate the cultural imagination today.

The first four essays provide not only historical context but arguments about the resources and practices required for the study of anatomy to develop as it did. With citations of Homer, Aristotle, and Galen, the first essay by Vincent Barras emphasizes the unnaturalness of dissection—from its first appearances in the West—and describes its development as accidental and contingent, not seamless or necessary. In the second essay, Dominique Brancher and Maike Christadler focus attention on the iconography of early anatomical images, especially the Adam and Eve figures in Vesalius’ Epitome, encouraging us to see the aesthetic and erotic aspects of these images—combining original sin and voyeurism—as strategies that not only granted legitimacy to anatomical knowledge but also shaped its impact in different medical specialties, including gynecology. The third essay by Andrea Carlino turns to the spectacular nature of anatomy and the new connotations that began to accrue around public dissections in the sixteenth century under the influences of Galenic medicine, architectural investigations based on the ancient work of Vitruvius, and the theatrical nature of civic life in the period. In the fourth essay, Rafael Mandressi focus on the sensorial program instituted by the renaissance of anatomy, linking the practices and techniques of objectifying both bodies and spaces to the emergence of mechanism in the seventeenth century.

The final three essays elaborate on the function of anatomical study today in medicine. The fifth essay by Jean-Pierre Hornung, Josef Kapfhammer, and Beat Riederer connects anatomy as a descriptive science to morphology and histology and poses the question: with the graphic representation of complex structures in today’s scanning technologies, is the practice of dissection—undertaken by medical students—obsolete? The essay argues that encounters with dissection remain fundamental for the emotional development of medical students, who must begin to confront death on material and ethical grounds, and for their intellectual development. Dissection allows students to understand the surface and texture of the organs, anatomical variations, and the relationship between organs, and this learning by gesture and touch supplements the learning that comes from memorizing information about the differences associated with representations of the human body (surface depictions, scans; p. 66). In the sixth essay, Patrice Mangin, Silke Grabherr, and Jessica Vanhaebost discuss forensic and virtual autopsies and the development...