Touching anatomy: On the handling of preparations in the anatomical cabinets of Frederik Ruysch (1638–1731)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2014.11.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The paper is about the anatomical Cabinets of Frederik Ruysch (1668–1738).

  • Most of the preparations were ‘working material’ rather than artistic ‘still lifes’.

  • The paper offers a detailed description of how anatomical preparations were continuously handled, touched and dissected.

  • Visitors were allowed to hold and examine preparations.

  • Visitors related emotionally to preparations in much the same way as people relate to relics.

Abstract

This paper argues that the anatomical Cabinets of Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch must be understood as an early modern workshop in which preparations were continuously handled. It is claimed that preparations actively appealed to anatomists and visitors to handle, re-dissect, touch, and even kiss them. Touching anatomy, therefore, not only refers to the physical handling of objects, but also to the ways preparations impacted on visitors and touched them emotionally.

Introduction

One of the many bizarre stories in the history of medicine is a tale about the Russian Czar Peter the Great and his visit to the anatomical Cabinets of anatomist Frederik Ruysch in Amsterdam. The Czar was greatly impressed with the collections, in particular with the lifelike way in which Ruysch had preserved the tiny bodies of infants and babies. The story goes that he was so moved by the appearance of a child, which looked as if it were asleep, that he picked it up and kissed its rosy cheek.

Historians have often repeated this story. Few have taken it seriously, however. It has often been omitted from academic work on Ruysch. If historians mention the episode at all, it is almost always in a metaphorical way, not in reference to a real event. For instance, the research team who recently launched a virtual museum exhibiting the Ruysch collections kept in the Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg, a joint venture involving Russian and Dutch historians of science and medicine, called the episode a ‘fairytale’.1 They seem to adhere to the argument put forward by art historian Julie Hansen, that

the tale of the czar's embrace implies more than deception by mere imitation: Peter was not tricked into believing that the beautifully preserved child was actually alive; rather it was its eloquence and innocence that provoked his desire to embrace it, and later to possess it.2

Luuc Kooijmans, author of the most recent Ruysch biography, leaves the question of whether the story is true unresolved, but similarly relates the Czar's embrace and kiss to his admiration for the lifelike appearance of the preparations.3 When seen this way, the story mainly highlights the level of artistry of the preparations—they looked so lifelike that visitors could even imagine kissing them. Historians have mainly left it at that and never seriously considered the possibility that the Czar physically touched and kissed the preparation.

Yet there is more truth in the story than we acknowledge. For a start, Ruysch himself described the episode in his collected works. He proudly stated: ‘I prepared the face of a boy so beautifully that a certain great monarch in Europe embraced it and kissed it’.4 Moreover, I would argue that at the time it was considered normal to touch and even handle preparations while visiting an anatomical collection. So it is not unimaginable that Ruysch took the child's head out of its container for Peter the Great to hold. This means that, as well as emphasizing the great beauty and perfection of Ruysch's Cabinets, the story gives an important insight into how particular audiences physically and emotionally responded to preparations. In other words, Czar Peter's kiss shows that when we think of Ruysch's preparations solely in terms of their visual beauty, we overlook crucial aspects of how historical actors actually handled and experienced them.

One important reason why historians have hardly ever considered the daily goings-on in Ruysch's Cabinets is that we tend to think about early modern anatomical collections in a nineteenth-century way. Historians of collections and museums have marked the nineteenth century as the period when collections turned into museums, whereby the ‘museum is a kind of entombment, a display of once lived activity’ and ‘collecting is the process of the museum's creation, the living act that the museum embalms’.5 What is more, in museum studies it is generally assumed that museums in the nineteenth century adopted a hands-off policy and changed into disciplining institutions, forcing visitors to keep a respectful distance.6 In medicine the detachment between anatomical objects and their viewers further increased after the ‘laboratory revolution’ in medicine and the ‘birth of the clinic’ pushed anatomical collections into the inaccessible domain of medicine. The ensuing break in the ways anatomy was practised and experienced created a radical divide between medical professionals and students on the one hand, and a lay public for whom it became increasingly difficult to visit and experience anatomical collections on the other.7 Whatever was happening behind the doors of medical collections was so much hidden from the public eye, that it has often been assumed that preparations—in particular early modern pieces—became obsolete objects, no longer actively used, merely collecting dust on the shelves. Practices of handling preparations were slowly forgotten. Only recently have historians started to acknowledge that nineteenth-century ‘museum medicine’, far from forgetting anatomical collections, in fact continued early modern practices of touching, handling and re-dissecting anatomical preparations.8

Yet, although historians have started to rewrite the history of nineteenth-century anatomical collection practices, the way we tend to look at eighteenth-century anatomical collections is still heavily influenced by the austere and disciplining image of medical collections as secluded spaces full of ‘hands-off’ specimens which, once made, were carefully locked away on the shelves of anatomical museums. This is also how historians generally view Ruysch's anatomical preparations—as ‘pieces of art’, showing God's providential hand in creation, carefully arranged on the shelves to be admired from a safe distance. This image of Ruysch's Cabinets does not however do justice to the fact that Ruysch was always working on and re-using his preparations in the pursuit of new research questions. Nor does it consider how preparations affected visitors, who actively and emotionally engaged with the preparations.

This paper offers a new reading of how anatomy was ‘done’ in the early eighteenth century. It emphasizes hands-on practices and experiences, the trial and error method of doing anatomy, and the active involvement of both lay and professional audiences. Rather than solely focussing on the sense of sight in the analysis of objects—as is so often the case in the historiography of the visual and material culture of the sciences—the paper follows recent work on the import of the other senses in the making of the sciences.9 In so doing it provides an explanation of why Peter the Great's kiss was not so bizarre (even though we shudder at the thought of it).10

The argument builds on the work of historians and art historians who have hinted at more active and commercial uses of objects in collections. Historian Daniel Margocsy has rightly drawn attention to the fact that anatomists—including Frederik Ruysch—were regularly involved in the marketing of anatomical objects as expensive luxury goods with a significant financial value.11 This argument in itself makes the preparations more profane, i.e. it focuses our attention away from the moral (memento mori) messages that have always been at the centre of historical attention.12

Moreover, it has been argued that on the art market owners, visitors and potential buyers habitually picked up pieces of art to closely examine them. This is visible on prints of the Antwerp art market, for instance.13 Art historian Geraldine Johnson has similarly argued that small-scale sculpture on the Italian market was meant ‘to be savoured at close quarters, [and] turned in the hand’. However, as Johnson states, ‘the evidence for and implications of such encounters have only rarely been examined in any depth’.14

Historians of wax models have also stressed the importance of physically experiencing objects. They have argued that wax models—as opposed to earlier anatomical rituals—brought anatomy closer to people. No longer viewed from a distance during a public dissection, organs and body parts could be brought within close proximity of viewers. The materiality of soft, malleable and moist-looking wax gave the models a ‘lifelike’ appearance, i.e. the choice of material highlighted the anatomist's capacity to replicate life and, as it were his ability to cross the line between the natural and the artificial. Moreover, wax modellers' explicit decision to focus on the senses suggests an intimate connection between anatomy and sensory experience.15 A material disadvantage of the models was that they were extremely fragile—handling them was reserved for a privileged few. Anna Maerker has argued that in Florence more widespread physical involvement of visitors began in the 1780s with the making of wooden ‘dissectible models’.16

However, although historians have hinted at the importance of handling objects in collections, what the handling actually entailed often remains unclear. I offer here a detailed description of proceedings in Ruysch's Cabinets in pursuit of the argument that we should consider Ruysch's anatomical Cabinets as a typical early modern workshop and the knowledge that emerged from this workshop as a tacit and sensory kind of knowledge embodied in preparations.

Historian Pamela Smith has summarized the nature of the artisanal knowledge of early modern workshops in five important characteristics:

  • 1.

    It is produced ‘in the act of doing’ and refers to what scholars of pedagogy call ‘the situated nature of learning’.

  • 2.

    It was collaborative and resulted in a body of techniques and knowledge that was transmitted in an integral and coherent way.

  • 3.

    Craft knowledge was demonstrated in public. Artisans proved their mastery of a craft by producing a masterpiece.

  • 4.

    Craft knowledge was empirical, employing observation, precision, and investigative experimentation.

  • 5.

    Proceedings in the workshop were never totally controlled by the master but influenced by the vagaries of the physical and social world, which means that knowledge was continually being refined, enriched, or completely revised by experience.17

All five points are applicable to Ruysch's anatomical Cabinets:
  • 1.

    Ruysch's anatomical knowledge was produced in the act of doing. The refinement of his injection methods fuelled anatomical theories and, conversely, anatomical assumptions often required the improvement of instruments and techniques.

  • 2.

    Although Ruysch carefully kept his methods of injecting secret, his anatomical ideas and his methods of preparing were a matter of debate. Colleagues and students gathered in the Cabinets to examine and discuss preparations. The spatial arrangement of Ruysch's house was similar to the set-up of artisanal workshops: the anatomy rooms were simultaneously used for working, exhibiting and lecturing, which means that workbenches and tables shared the same rooms as the shelves containing the preparations.

  • 3.

    Ruysch's Cabinets were a public place of learning, not only for colleagues and students, but also for lay audiences, who were invited to physically experience his preparations and to declare the truth of Ruysch's anatomical claims. Ruysch enthusiastically showed off his mastery in complicated preparations. The famous tableaus of tiny skeletons standing on heaps of bones and stones (which represent a graveyard) carrying moral messages in the form of flowers (symbolizing mortality), trumpets (referring to the day of judgement) or toys (life is but a game) represent such masterpieces.

  • 4.

    It goes without saying that the knowledge emerging from the Cabinets was empirical. In fact, visitors were continuously invited to empirically experience, to closely inspect and handle objects.

  • 5.

    The bulk of Ruysch's preparations were working material. In line with the common notion that workshop products were never finished, Ruysch was continuously adjusting and improving his preparations.

The most important source materials for studying Ruysch's collections are the preparations themselves.18 Invaluable are Ruysch's own descriptions of his collections, the Thesauri and his Opera omnia anatomico-medico-chirurgica (1721–1722), published posthumously in 1744. The collected works not only contain the extended catalogues of the collections but also case notes on the patients whose bits and pieces ultimately ended up as preparations. Moreover, Ruysch carefully described the outlook of his preparations, including their placements on the shelves, as well as how his preparations should be viewed, touched and handled. Ruysch's written works, in other words are ‘records of practice’, they reflect the hands-on and daily activities in the Cabinets as well as the relationship between anatomists, preparations and visitors ‘in the act of doing’.19

Before discussing the routine of handling preparations and visitors' involvement in Ruysch's Cabinets, we must first consider the pressing early modern problem of and need for ‘bloodless dissection’, which was of central importance to the business of anatomy.

Section snippets

Bloodless dissection

The rapid decay of corpses was one of the most pressing problems in early modern anatomy. As soon as a body became available anatomists had to work round the clock for three days in order to get as much out of a dissection as possible. After that point the stench and the mess made further work impossible. A second, perhaps even bigger problem was that with every cut into the body the abundance of blood made a clear view of tissues and organs virtually impossible. So ‘bloodless dissection’ was a

Hands-on anatomy

Ruysch kept his preparations in five rooms in his house on Bloemengracht in Amsterdam. They can be roughly divided into three categories: (1) dry preparations such as skeletons, skulls, and dried organs (often also injected with wax); (2) wet (injection) preparations contained in bottles whose lids could easily be removed; and (3) wet preparations in jugs with elaborately decorated lids. Preparations in this last category could not possibly be handled without damage.

It is significant that

Touching anatomy

The opportunity to actively handle preparations—made possible by Ruysch's perfected preparation methods—turned Ruysch's anatomical workshop into a public place. After the showing of Louis de Bils' whole-body preparations, people already spoke approvingly of the fact that the public were permitted and able to touch preparations. In a pamphlet reporting a discussion between neighbours in Amsterdam, the bloodless dissections and preparations of De Bils were discussed at length. One stated that he

Acknowledgement

For fruitful discussion and helpful suggestions I thank Hieke Huistra, Marieke Hendriksen, Robert Zwijnenberg, Lissa Roberts, Tim Huisman and the anonymous referees of this journal. I am also grateful to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) (PR-07-11) for funding a project that has inter alia resulted in this article.

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      One of the earliest makers and collectors of specimens, the Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch (1638–1731), was particularly famed for his injection technique. With enormous skill, he prepared a child's face to look alive with fresh rosy cheeks by injecting colour into the tiny vessels in the skin (Knoeff, 2015). Emulating life, the anatomist could demonstrate that anatomical knowledge pertained not just to the dead, but also to living bodies, and in addition show that it was not just about anatomy.

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